LiveJournal Project - April 2003

Last one for the day.

Date: 2003-04-01 06:38
Subject: another quiet day in suburbia
the war continues, the cats meow, the recycling truck just drove down my street to empty those happy blue plastic containers. oh, will the excitement never end? about all that's been even slightly entertaining thus far this week has been a pissing match i found myself involved in with one of the members of azjournal. apparently, said person has no original ideas of his own and can only forward to the group things he's received in email, and upon receiving some criticism from yours truly (who, as y'all know, can't leave anything alone), chooses to post a reply which opened him up to a double-barrel blast of patented ravyn skull-fuckery. the whole thing closed his reply: "i don't read your posts anymore because they're too long" and some other vacuous phrasing which basically says nothing more than "obviously, sir, you have humbled my little brain, and i cannot formulate an intelligent reply so i shall just resort to childish cop-outs."

it's a rather sad comment on the attention span and critical-thinking ability of today's youth. if people like this fuckwit are our future, then we are indeed doomed.

on another note... happy april fool's day. go play a prank on someone.

Time: 11:04
Subject: worth a reprint (from the az-psytrance list)
some of these are pretty amusing: http://winstars.free.fr/english/bush.html

Time: 14:52
Subject: oh, the fun of immaturity!
thanks to the miracle of usenet, i downloaded 6 episodes of that timeless classic, beavis n' butthead, complete with music videos and commentary. life is good. we are indeed quite amused. (ok, so i'm laughing my ass off.)

i have seen the top of the mountain. and it is good.
Mood: amused

Date: 2003-04-02 12:19
Subject: new cell phone number....
hey folks... for those of you that ever find the need to call me, i have a new cell number.

602-NICE-TRY (If you have my current number, this is when I got it. -Ed.)

the old one will continue to work for a little while, too.
Music: Tunnel Trance Force Vol. 24 - CD1 - Deep Blue Mix

Time: 17:02
Subject: WTF??
i guess if you know the right people, and you can't get a date for prom, anything is possible. this article was listed on the FRONT PAGE of azcentral.com
Popular, pretty 16-year-old needs prom date

and of course, yours truly couldn't let this one slide by. here's my letter to the reporter that wrote the story.

apparently, it must be an incredibly slow news day both in arizona and the world, for a story such as this to make it to the front page of azcentral.com. while i'm sure that ms. davis is a charming young woman and deserving of a fine date to the prom, i don't think it's even the slightest bit appropriate that this story should be printed on any page of the local newspaper or its website. not only is this not "news" that anyone over the age of 17 is going to care about, it's a rather appalling display of elitism. after all, there are, i'm sure, plenty of other high school kids who are just as deserving of a special night at the prom, but no one is featuring them in a cover story.

Date: 2003-04-03 07:44
Subject: the propaganda machine marches on
last night _purpleglitter_ and i went to the arizona science center for one of their "adults' night out" features to see what was described as by the quarterly mailer i received as this:

The Arizona Science Center is pleased to welcome Dr. Brandenstein from the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Brandenstein will talk about current drug control policy, breakthroughs in addiction research and the development of our new "What is Addiction?" exhibits.

unfortunately, instead of getting an informative presentation complete with real science, we got nothing but a nice chunk of government feel-good self-aggrandizing propaganda from someone who seemed to be neither scientist nor decent public speaker. i was expecting to hear some biological terms like "hippocampus" and "cerebellum" and "dopamine" at the very least, but hell, this moron started off his presentation with a bloody organizational chart of the ONDCP. does anyone really care? this is not a policy discussion, this is a waste of time. so we walked out on the guy about 15 minutes into his talk and went to check out the exhibits instead. apparently we weren't the only ones. we got to peer through some night-vision goggles, ride on a segway (i don't see how these things will EVER take off, i wasn't impressed with anything except the potential for damage if you ran someone over at full speed), and wander through the building without the annoyance of little kids that is normally present. but the best part of the night? hearing a group of middle-aged men start a "we want g-force!" chant - hell, that was more amusing than riding the g-force exhibit itself (but that was fun, too).

Time: 12:42
Subject: oh, why the hell not?
stolen simultaneously from littledevi and theklute:

1. What does your first name mean?
   Old German for "vigorous".
2. What does your middle name mean?
   Teutonic for "fierce protector".
3. What does your last name mean?
   Czech for part of a road to a castle. although i don't know which part.
4. So what does your name mean when put together?
   stay off my road or i'll whoop yer ass?
5. Do you have a nickname?
   yes. ravyn will do just fine, thanks. or the standard diminutive of my first name, which is what everyone uses that doesn't call me ravyn.
6. What would you have been named if you were the opposite gender?
   according to my mother, amanda. although i have no idea why. there aren't any amandas anywhere in my family history that i know of.
7. Any other name oddities?
   there's a hotel somewhere in austria named after me (well, my last name, anyway). i wonder if i could get a free room?

Date: 2003-04-07 12:02
Subject: boo hoo hoo
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0403ENTERTAINMENT-PEOPLE-CARREY-DC.html

LOS ANGELES - Actor Jim Carrey's ex-wife wants a judge to award her more child support, saying that their daughter must get by on $10,000 a month and cannot afford her own bodyguards, personal trainer or Pilates equipment, according to court papers obtained by an investigative Web siteon Wednesday.
Melissa Carrey says in the court papers, obtained by The Smoking Gun Web site, that $10,000 a month 'is not sufficient' to meet the needs of her 15-year-old daughter Jane, who wants to pursue a career in the entertainment industry."

oh boo-fucking-hoo to jane and melissa. $10,000 a month is not sufficient to meet the daughter's needs? fuckin' christ. while i'm no fan of actors who make millions of dollars per movie, i think this is recockulous. if i was the judge in this case, i'd tell carrey's ex-wife that she needs a reality check and to get her bloody head out of her ass. if you can't make ends meet with $10k per month, then i think maybe it's time to consider a lifestyle change. i don't care who you are, you don't NEED a private ski instructor and a $200k pilates studio, and as a 15-year-old no-name, i don't think personal security is justified either. it's not like this bitch is the president's daughter or something.
Mood: bored

Date: 2003-04-09 19:59
Subject: a week's worth of mayhem all rolled into one!
friday night _purpleglitter_ and i made the trek to freedom to see bad boy bill and dieselboy. we met up with mindvirus and a couple of his friends from school, and i also saw angelgallie19 who was visiting from california. there's not really a whole lot to say about this part of the evening. i wasn't really having a good time - the music was good, i can't complain about that, but the vibe just didn't seem to be there. i know mindvirus was having a good time, thanks to the convincing of _purpleglitter_ to get his arse out of the house and throw down a little party action for a weekend night. apparently, xianaz and nichiyume were there as well, but we didn't see them, and cory and i ended up leaving after about an hour. part of my discontent i originally blamed on feeling old, but i think cory had it pegged more accurately when she said that it was more of an out-of-place feeling. yeah. now if only i could find a place that i felt in-place, life would be grand. but i digress.

got back to my house about 1am, to the blink blink of the answering machine - 5 messages in the span of about 30 minutes from two friends that, for the purposes of this entry, we shall call G and R. G's leaving the messages and i can tell that he seems a bit concerned, both by his tone of voice and choice of words, but he doesn't say what's going on. cory and i start watching beavis and butt-head to pass the time; i had ordered the complete 6-dvd set earlier in the week, and one can never have too much cornholio. where i come from, we have no bunghole! anyway... G calls again around 1:30-2am and we talk, and he says that they have a problem and want to know if they can come over. sure, i say, since i know i'll be up for awhile. they arrive a bit later and proceed to give a recap of what's happened to them over their evening. they had gone out to party with another friend of theirs who we'll call S - all three had engaged in some neurochemical engineering over the course of the night at the bars they visited, and in his mentally-not-present state of mind, R had also taken it upon himself to sell some of his goodies to a random girl that they had met. according to their recap, this then led to them being watched and followed throughout the bar for the remainder of the night. R got paranoid (as one is often wont to do when one is rolling balls and also engaging in the commerce of narcotics trade), went outside the bar, and unloaded the remainder of his stash (a nontrivial amount, let me say) by dropping it in the bushes. the three of them went back to the hotel where they'd started out the evening, and they see COP CARS waiting by the entrance. R and G assume the worst and split off from S, and eventually end up in R's car driving around for hours because they think they've been followed. and in the meantime, they have no idea what happened to S. it's about at this point when they end up at my house, R alternating between curses of his stupidty, worries about whether or not "they" found the stuff he dropped, and worried about whether or not S got busted. add to this that both S's girlfriend and R's girlfriend are calling S's cellphone trying to figure out what the hell's going on. G just decides to raid my refrigerator and ends up consuming about half my bottle of malibu rum. oh well, i didn't need it anyway.

so i tell R that there's an easy way to determine whether or not he's fuxored. go back down to the bar (it's about 4am right now) and see if the bottle o' stuff is still there. if it is, pick it up, learn your lesson, and no worries. if it isn't, then either some homeless guy is having one hell of a night, or your shit is in the fryer. R and G are so far from sober and awake that it's not even funny, so i drive down there with R, but we don't stop and look for the stuff because there's some mysterious guy sitting in his car across the street just watching the place. at 4:30 in the morning, this strikes us as a little odd. cory and G make a pass as well, and seeing the same dude, also decide not to stop. in the meantime, S calls R and says that he's at home, he's fine, and the cops weren't there to bust anyone, just to provide some extra security for events going on that evening. he's a bit pissed, too, that G and R ditched him. well, at least one problem is solved. we all end up back at my house, and once the sun comes up, R and G drive down to the bar area by themselves, and about 7am i get a call from R that he's found his stuff, and he's going home and going to bed. problem #2 solved.

so kids, there's a lesson to be learned in all of this. if you're going to consume illegal drugs, then for god's sake, don't be selling them on the same night when you're flying somewhere over the rainbow. and if you're going to sell things which could get you sent to jail for a long, long time to become bubba's girlfriend, make sure that you've got your wits about you and stay sober. this is something that R should know very well, so i don't know what caused his exercise of poor judgement. mistakes like that can get you in deep, deep shit. in more ways than one.

the rest of the weekend was rather quiet. cory and i played a couple games of scrabble without stormshadowsong's infamous blank-replacement rule, and she managed to beat me one game by about 20 points. the other game, well, ravyn got a fresh delivery of whoop-ass and had to make good use of it. one of these games i will break 500 points. but 460-480 isn't too shabby either.

saturday night i headed over to see djskott and we spun a 3-hour tag team set on his shoutcast radio station. i'd say it went pretty well, overall, and when you consider how little sleep that i'd gotten from friday morning until saturday night, i can't really fault myself for the few mixing mistakes i made. we'd tried to record the set, but scott was having problems with his computer so it didn't happen. sunday, i slept. mmm... sleep.

not much has gone on this week as of yet - one cat went to the vet for dental work, another cat has a bald spot from where he got his rabies vaccine last week, and he's also got cat dandruff. white flakes and a bald spot on a black cat are just wrong. sick and wrong. the vet says that sometimes they do have reactions to the vaccines and the patch of hair should grow back within a few weeks and that i should change his diet. so we'll see what happens.

finally, ravyn's dumbass moment of the week. on my way to pick up some pizza for dinner this evening, i stopped at safeway to buy some coke. i see red box, the word coke, and the white swirl, so i pick up my 12-pack, drop some money and out the door i go. i acquire my pie, head home to chow down, and i realize that in my immense-but-not-quite-infinite stupidity, i have not purchased coke, but that liquid-cake-icing vile shit that they call "vanilla coke." dammit. pizza with water just isn't the same.
Music: Peter Murphy
Mood: bored

Date: 2003-04-10 04:20
Subject: vegas anyone??
ok, so this is a longshot, but it's worth a try anyway.

next weekend, _purpleglitter_ and i are likely trekking to las vegas, land of lights, sin, strippers, and fun neurochemical adventures. but given the choice, we'd rather not be the only two people going.

anyone else out there in the mood to escape this hellhole we call phoenix and go get totally stupid for a couple days?
Mood: awake

Time: 21:20
Subject: vegas, part 2?
so, given that next week is right around the corner, and certain folks who probably would like to go to vegas already have plans, i started thinking that perhaps a future vegas date would be better in terms of getting more participation. so i checked out vegas.com for upcoming things in that city of insanity, and i found this, which i think might be of interest to a good number of people:

Tiesto
House of Blues
Mandalay Bay
3950 S. Las Vegas Blvd.
Las Vegas, NV 89119
Price: $20.00
Showtimes: 11 p.m.
Show dates: May 25, 2003
Reservations: Reservations Recommended
Age Restrictions: Must be 21 years of age or older

yes, that's DJ Tiesto, the one and only. the only thing that sucks is that this show is on a SUNDAY night, but school will be out by then for all of you scholastic folks, and for people who work on mondays, there's nothing wrong with taking a mental health day now and then.

so, xianaz, mindvirus, nichiyume, djskott, and the rest of you, START PLANNING NOW. THERE WILL BE NO EXCUSES FOR NOT ATTENDING. and yeah, djskott and lilredravingurl, that goes for you, too. i'm sure we can find a way to get your asses up there.

so let's think about how much this shit might cost... IF we actually could get a decent-sized group, we could probably do a caravan and drive up there, thus saving some folks about $100 each. $20 to get in to the show. hotel and food and party favors would depend on the people involved and what they wanted to do. but i think that for those of ya on a budget, it could probably done for $300 per person or less. (share plates at the buffet or something?) so yeah, get yer asses in gear, get those hands in the air, and let's all go see tiesto and get even stupider than i had originally intended we get in the previous post. who's with me?!

edit: so rooms at mandalay bay that weekend are quite expensive, but at the luxor, right across the street, this is what they're showing: fri (may 23rd) and sun(may 25th) - $129; sat (may 24th) - $189. the excalibur, a little farther north on the strip, but still within easy walking distance, is even cheaper.
Mood: giddy

Date: 2003-04-11 10:29
Subject: this has got to be the quote of the year.
"Sadly, the world's a troubled place, but if you can't sit back, relax, and enjoy the utter absurdity of it all with some intense violence, mature humor, adult language, drugs, blood and gore every now and then -- what's the point?"

--vince desi, running with scissors' mad minister of mayhem
http://www.azcentral.com/ent/vgames/articles/0411postal2.html
Mood: amused

Date: 2003-04-15 12:23
Subject: bad-ass!
i just saw the new trailers for "matrix reloaded".... damn.... you know who's gonna be in line come midnight when that shit comes out.
Mood: excited

Time: 17:12
Subject: a communication from your party planner
an additional bit of vegas / tiesto info for the trip next month... i didn't know this, but apparently that weekend (may 23rd-may 26th) is memorial day weekend. that means that none of you are going to be able to use the "but i have to work or go to school on monday" excuse and have anyone believe you.

it also probably means that ya ought to make your reservations as soon as possible. for anyone that thinks driving sucks and would rather fly to vegas, there are $29 one-way fares (which works out to about $75 per person round-trip after taxes and such) still available from southwest airlines, but there aren't many left, and you'd have to leave saturday and come back tuesday. friday-to-monday flights look to be about $90 per person (taxes and all that shit included).

one more thing, i noticed that vegas.com updated the prices for the tiesto show. it was $20 as of the last time i saw it, but now they have it as $35, $45, and $150. what's the difference between those price levels? i have absolutely no idea. will the prices change again between now and may 25th? again, i don't know. here's the link to the page at vegas.com: ..

edit... from djskott -- enter the tiesto contest - free tickets and all that good shit: ... link to house of blues ...

and if you want to buy your tickets: ... link to ticketmaster site ...
-ravyn out.
Mood: mellow

Date: 2003-04-18 00:07
Subject: it'll always be squaw peak to me.
--crossposted to azjournal - so if you don't keep up on that community (and why should you, most of the time it's crap), you can still be treated to a happy rant. =)

so, according to the arizona republic (link here) the state board on geographic and historic names voted 5-1 to waive the 5-year waiting period and recommend that squaw peak (and squaw peak parkway) be renamed to piestewa peak / parkway in honor of the army private of the same name who died in iraq. bollocks!

first, let me say that yes, i am often considered an insensitive bastard (and it's a title that i wear with pride), but i just don't think that ms. piestewa is worthy of having a mountain named after her. she died serving her country, you say? so what? so did a bunch of other people who will never have landmarks in their honor - that's why we have things like VETERANS PARKWAY - to honor them all.

second, despite what all of the nationalist flag-waving bravado spouters would have you believe, she was not a hero. she was a maintenance worker who got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and had some bad shit happen. she didn't throw herself on a grenade to save her comrades. she didn't single-handedly capture an enemy stronghold, or keep those invading iraqis from gaining a foothold on american soil. she worked in maintenance. it's a tragedy that she died, sure, but there's nothing heroic about it. when i think of a hero, i think of someone that i'd look up to, someone that i'd aspire to be like. being a maintenance worker who got ambushed and shot is not too high on that list.

and third, even if we decide that ms. piestewa's death and service to her country are landmark worthy, i can't get past the impression that the rush-rush haste with which this whole name-change process was put to and then ramrodded through the board's decision-making process smacks of low-class political pandering. gov. napolitano already requested the resignation of one board member who wouldn't entertain the petition, and another one resigned in the face of what he saw as political pressure to approve the name-change. the five-year waiting period normally followed by the board exists for a reason, and i would venture that one of those reasons is precisely so that situations like this don't happen. if the person is still remembered as being important or newsworthy five years after s/he's died, then i think a much stronger case could be made that the person is deserving of lasting remembrance by the whole of the state. if the person is newsworthy when s/he dies, but then that memory fades over time, then maybe the person's life and death wasn't all that big of a deal in the first place.

finally, from the smart-ass side of things... it's going to cost a lot of money to reprint all the official literature of arizona with the new name - this is money that the state just does not have right now. not to mention the number of people who are going to mispronounce and/or misspell the name "piestewa". hell, until i'd seen it written phonetically in the above-mentioned article, i didn't know how to say it - and the pronunciation which i was using, as it turns out, was way off.
Music: a little happy hardcore - wee!

Time: 01:10
Subject: this is what happens if you eat oreos before bed, kids.
the other night i dreamt of geopolitical chaos. the united states, led by herr fuhrer dubya, had invaded syria and iran in our neverending search for terr'ists and weapons of mass destruction, and we were gearing up to go after north korea as well. i was in a strange position in the dream, as if above it all, watching the various forms of death and mayhem unfold on a map as if some kids were playing a giant game of risk and i was observing. from my vantage point above the world (i guess?) i saw the korean peninsula burst into flames, followed by a retaliatory biological attack on the eastern seaboard of the US. i remember frantically trying to figure out some way to stop the insanity, but knew that i wouldn't be able to do anything.

at that, i woke up, cursed myself for eating those couple of oreos before bed, and found myself feeling incredibly lonely (i guess that's what happens when the world crumbles beneath you?) and wishing that i had something other than a small (well, he's not really that small at 16 pounds) black cat to cuddle with. guess i'll have to make do.

on a totally unrelated note... i'm listening to the TATU album (yeah, the russian lesbian chicks) that i downloaded the other day, to find out if it's any good. and they've done a cover of "how soon is now?" by the smiths. some songs really should just be left alone.

Date: 2003-04-21 22:56
Subject: vegas updates...
ok, so 5 of us have our plane tickets now:

_purpleglitter_, ben, djskott, lilredravingurl, and i are leaving on friday, may 23rd - southwest airlines flight 2151- leaves phoenix at 7:50PM and arrives in vegas at 8:55PM.

ben, scott, and lisa are coming back on monday, the 26th, on southwest airlines flight 2133 - leaving vegas at 7:00PM and getting back to phoenix at 8:05PM.
cory and i are staying til tuesday the 27th, coming back on southwest airlines flight 1536, leaving vegas at 1:45PM and arriving in phoenix at 2:50PM

the reason that i'm posting this is, well, to let the rest of you know what's going on and in the event that you want to get on the same flights, here's how you'd be able to do so. more info to follow at a later date - but my guess is that we'll all be staynig in different hotels. ben is likely to be at the mirage, cory and i will either be at aladdin or bellagio, and scott n' lisa may be at excalibur or the luxor.

so... mindvirus, xianaz, spacekadette, katryn, nichiyume and anyone else who'd like to partake in this mad, mad dash of insanity, start plotting your mayhem. with enough people, we can rule vegas! muahahahaha!!! =)

Date: 2003-04-24 19:08
Subject: 'tis a sad, sad day in ravynland.
it's really quite interesting how my life can go from being pretty decent, where i have a reasonable sense of hope about how things are going to unfold, to feeling like a pile of overripe shit where i'm in absolute 100-percent-don't-give-a-fuck mode in the span of just a couple short days and thanks to one miserable event.

i guess i still hold out a little glimmer of hope that it might reverse itself, but that glimmer is fading rapidly. we'll see what happens.
Mood: crushed

Date: 2003-04-27 10:19
Subject: feedback, if you please...
all of you out there that listen to electronica (or might like to listen to some) and have a high-speed net connection, if you'd be so kind as to take a moment and point your browser here: ... dead link ...

and check out demo 3 - "the ravyn flies high at midnight" - feedback would be greatly appreciated. thanks! psylence - i know you won't like it, at least in terms of track selection, but there's no pleasing everyone. =)

oh and djskott -- you may already have figured this out, but there's actually a third track mixed in with underworld's "rez 2003" - it's deepsky's cosmic dancer - towards the end of the track. might make for some interesting mixing...

for y'all who care about what actually goes on in my life, i'll have a longer update tomorrow, covering the shitty thing that's gone on this week (and was alluded to in the previous update).

--ravyn out.
Music: ravyn - the ravyn flies high at midnight
Mood: accomplished

Date: 2003-04-28 15:45
Subject: i want my cat back, dammit.
yeah... so last week was a pretty shit-ass week due to one thing in particular - one of my cats disappeared. three cats went out to explore the neighborhood like they always do, and only two came back. shiznit's been gone since wednesday morning - and the really weird thing is that it just seems like he's vanished into thin air. cory and i wandered around the neighborhood, up and down a bunch of the streets, and we haven't seen any bodies, nor any collar, or any shiznit. you'd think that if someone ran him over or if somebody's dog got him, then the person would at least have the courtesy to call me and let me know. but, no calls from random people saying "hey, man, your cat is toast." visited several shelters and pound-type places around town, but he's not there, and none of the vets in the area had anyone bring in an injured stray cat last week. so where'd he go? i've made up a bunch of flyers with his picture on it and mailed them to the various shelters and rescue operations, and i'll be going out today to plaster them all over the neighborhood and annoy the piss out of the neighbors.

the current theory that i'm operating under is that someone cat-napped him. i don't have any evidence to support this theory, except my general belief that there are a lot of miscreant people in the world, and it's as good a theory as any other. the whole situation sucks ass - not only that he's gone, but that i don't know what happened to him - if he's ok, or if he's hurt, or if he's wormfood, or what. and, to top it all off, shiznit was chantal's cat - and her canadian idol auditions were this past weekend - so i'd planned to not tell her that he'd vanished until after her auditions were over so that it wouldn't have any chance of fucking her shit up. that plan didn't work. she made it through the first round of auditions and then ended up calling me on sunday (with two more rounds of auditions left to go) and we talked for a bit and it came out in conversation. so that blows. anyway, i'm determined to get my cat back, and until i have reason to suspect otherwise, i'm going to assume that he's still alive out there somewhere. and hopefully chantal still kicked ass in her auditions and will make it onto canadian TV sometime over the summer (assuming that SARS doesn't wipe out all of toronto).

that's about it - didn't do jack shit last week because i was upset about being de-catted, worked on some web shit on saturday and picked up a new musical gadget on sunday - a denon DN-S5000 cd deck - spent a shitload of time last night fucking with it, trying to apply vinyl-mixing skill to the cd-realm and generally not faring too well. ah well, it gives me somethin' to do - and in a marathon 4-5 hour set i came to the conclusion that maybe i might start spinning breaks. wee.

yeah, so in the hopes that he'll be back soon, i'm posting a picture of shiznit and his brother, raven.

They are both gone now. =( -Ed.
Mood: blah

Time: 21:46
Subject: taken from azjournal
when life sucks, or you're just in need of some sugary goodness, what better than FREE ICE CREAM?! hell, i don't even like ice cream all that much, but since it's free, and baskin-robbins is only a mile up the street, i couldn't possibly pass this up. and y'all should take part, too.

here's the link. http://www.livejournal.com/community/azjournal/460278.html#cutid1
Mood: blah

Date: 2003-04-30 01:48
Subject: looks like i'm goin' to hell!
Quiz time...
The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Well, we always knew I was a heretic anyway. -Ed.

Time: 09:58
Subject: in honor of the previous post...
knowledge is power. power corrupts. study hard. be evil.