LiveJournal Project - November 2003

Another month, another bike stolen.

Date: 2003-11-04 11:26
Subject: T to the I to the motherfuckin' ESTO, part 1.
halloween in vegas was unreal... it started with cory and i deciding to fly up a day early, because we were tired of sitting around waiting for it all and neither of us had anything of importance to do in class on friday. and as a result, we got to see some seriously wack-ass shit. after getting in late thursday night and grabbing some dinner at fiamma (the italian restaurant at the mgm grand - if you get a chance to order their duck salad, do it - it sounds grosser than gross but it's fuckin' GOOD) we went on a blackjack mission. a few hours in, i'm sitting at a single-deck $25 table with one other dude, having a good time and practicing my slow accumulation of funds, when some old dude and his sidekick come up to the table and the old guy shouts "give me some money, let's play some fuckin' cards!" he throws his players card on the table, and they run it through, and they tell him that because all of his money's on deposit at the bellagio, he's going to have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get it at the mgm (even though the casinos are all linked together). this pisses the dude and his little minion off, and he tries to get the pit bosses to give him something to play with until then, after he's already lost $1300 on one hand just sitting there. this whole process continues for about 20 minutes, the dude yelling that he wants some money, the casino people trying to process his paperwork, at at one point, he even trades his rolex (a real, solid gold rolex, by the way) to me for $500 in chips just so he can play a hand (he bought it back later - i should've just gotten up and made a run for the hills). i suppose you had to be there to really understand how fuckin' hilarious the whole thing was - but as it turns out, the dude's got over $200k on deposit at the bellagio and he's apparently some sort of texas oil baron. and apparently he was one of those rich dude's that's used to always getting his away and more than willing to make a shitload of noise when it doesn't happen. (i still don't have any idea who his little minion was - whether it was a friend, a family member, or some gay escort). but anyway, the guy's going nuts - trying to bet his cellphone, his wallet, his watch, several thousand dollars per hand over the table limit, you name it, he's trying to do it. and i think i agree with cory (who saw the whole thing) that he was doing it to fuck with them - i actually don't think he was drunk at all. well, anyway, the guy eventually leaves, having made a profit of about $6000. cory and i leave about an hour later, and we make our way down to the bellagio, and who do we see? mr. texas oil himself - sitting at a double-deck table with a recockulous mound of $5000 chips in front of him. turns out he took a marker for $175k and ran it up to over $300,000. i really wanted to get in on that game just for the sheer stupidity of it (table minimum was only $100 - but this guy was playing three hands at $10,000 apiece) but the table was full. so we watched for awhile, and i played a bit at the table next to him, breaking even after an hour or two - and noticing that his once-mighty mound of chips had dwindled down to a molehill. un-fuckin-real. i don't think i've ever had this much fun watching someone else play blackjack in my entire life - loud, obnoxious, and betting a shitload of cash and not giving two shits about it. i'd have loved to see the guy totally rape the bellagio for a good half million or so, but it was not to be.

on friday, djskott and lilredravingurl arrived, and we hit up house of blues at mandalay bay for dj tiesto. there were all kinds of interesting halloween costumes, and mine turned out to be quite a hit with pretty much everyone that saw it (i was a victim of a white tiger attack - like roy from sigfried and roy). the process of getting in to HoB was completely ridiculous; those assholes running the lines could seriously use some organizational assistance - first we're waiting in one line, then another, and then still another, and nobody's being clear as to which line we actually needed to be in. we finally get inside, and at that point all the shit is left behind. tiesto played a great set, as usual, people danced, chatted, and much fun was to be had by all. the winner of the costume contest was a guy dressed as flasher with a 3-foot dick - rather fitting, since the hostess of the costume contest was porn star briana banks.

anyway, i've a bunch of work to do, i'll finish this later.
Mood: tired

Date: 2003-11-05 14:00
Subject: damn fuck shit piss
apparently, i am not meant to own a bicycle this year. i walked into my office this morning, expecting to see my one-month-old 2003 full suspension mountain bike (the one that i bought to replace the one that had been stolen out of my office about a month and a half ago) locked up to the desk and awaiting my arrival for a nice, short ride to class. instead, what do i see? not my bike, but merely empty space, where said bike had once been, and a failed lock which had seen the business end of some bolt cutters on the carpeted floor.

fuckin' christ! what the hell is up with this shit?! i've now lost two $1000 mountain bikes in the last two months - and this time, the damn office door was LOCKED! not only that, but the bike was positioned in such a way that you couldn't see it from outside the office - so unless you actually KNEW it was there, you'd have no target to steal. i know it wasn't any of the people that work there (there are only three of them) so i'm pretty convinced at this point that it was some janitorial or maintenance person. we're trying to get the building management people to pay to replace it; we'll see how well that goes - but i won't be buying another one anytime soon. fuck it, i'll just walk to class.

the fuckass that made off with my bike had better hope he never runs into me. the first time it was mildly amusing, but this time i'm pissed off.

Date: 2003-11-17 15:11
Subject: how fedex helped the DEA steal $28.81 from a dead rabbit.
first, some background information. the name of my company is deadbunny enterprises, for those of you who don't know. deadbunny also has a fedex account number, because, on occasion, i ship things.

and now, the story. last month's bank statement arrived in the mail, and among the various checks written by mr. bunny was a check-card purchase in the amount of $28.81 for what looked like a fedex shipment sent out on october 14th, 2003. while i may be absent-minded on occasion, i generally have a pretty good memory when it comes to things which i've bought and things that i haven't, and as i was reading over the statement i was pretty sure that i hadn't sent any packages recently. i went down to wells fargo to ask them about this mystery charge, to see if maybe they had more detail in their computers than what was printed on my statement, and i was told by the head teller that it appeared to them that i had gone to fedex and bought something for $28.81, and that i should probably check with fedex to see what they could tell me about it. so, the weekend goes by, and i'm sitting on the couch today, looking at my wells fargo account to see if maybe it was a mistake and it was automatically corrected over the weekend, but no, there's still $28.81 missing from my account. on a whim, i grab the tracking number and punch it in to fedex.com, hoping to see what the hell it is that i've supposedly shipped.

according to the fedex website, on october 14th, ramona sanchez of the DEA (that's right, kids, the drug enforcement agency) sent a package back to DEA headquarters in virgina, where it was signed for by a c. jordan. furthermore, as i'm looking at the fedex website, i'm seeing that ms. sanchez used MY STREET ADDRESS to mail this package out, but with the city and zip code of the DEA office, as opposed to the city and zip which correspond to my actual address. i'm naturally thinking "WTF?!?" how is it that the DEA got ahold of my debit card, shipped out a package, and then gave me my debit card back - and couldn't even get my address right?? so i called the phoenix DEA office and left a message for ms. sanchez, telling her that it looked like she had somehow used my debit card (well, deadbunny's debit card) to pay the fedex man. she actually called me back right away, and we talked about it for a few minutes, and she was as confused about the situation as i was, but took down my information and said she'd look into it. in the meantime, at cory's suggestion, i called wells fargo's customer service and had them cancel my debit card and send me a new one, in the unlikely event that someone managed to get ahold of my card or somehow make a copy of it. unfortunately, that's all they could do; they didn't have any other information that might help me solve this riddle.

about an hour or so later, ms. sanchez calls back and says that she found the airbill number, and it did indeed match the airbill number on a package which she sent back to DEA headquarters on the 14th, but there's still no explanation as to how deadbunny got billed for it. at this point i'm thinking maybe there was an account number mixup, a digit off or in the wrong place or something; she says that she's going to ask the fedex guy when he comes and then get back to me. so, while i'm waiting, i figure that i'll call fedex myself and see what they have to say. i spoke to someone in their billing department and explained the situation, and she was able to pull up a copy of the airbill number, and then it all became clear (and ridiculous):

as it turns out, nobody at the DEA bothered to put their fedex account number on this particular airbill, so the fedex computer just did a generic search on "DEA" in arizona. and guess what came up? that's right, DEAdbunny enterprises. so it naturally filled in my fedex number, which is linked to my wells fargo debit card, and thus i was billed $28.81, an unwitting contributor to the government's war on drugs. =/
Mood: amused

Date: 2003-11-21 13:46
Subject: the end of semester blues...
here we are, rapidly approaching the end of yet another semester of school, and it's about this time that my "what the fuck am i doing this shit for?" mode has kicked in. this sort of thing happens all the time - i find myself wandering down some sort of life path, minding my own business, and then all of a sudden i have to stop and question the reasons for doing it. sometimes i can come up with convincing answers and that's usually enough to keep me content for awhile, but other times it's considerably harder to find a reasonable justification. and that's the point we're at now. school ends in about three weeks, and i have, once again, realized the pointlessness of what i'm doing. i suppose it would be different if, like most undergraduates, i was doing the school thing with an eye on starting a career or getting some sort of job, but that isn't and never has been my reason for being in school. ostensibly, my reason for doing this school shit is mere self-edification, which would be a good reason, i think, if i were actually learning enough to justify its continued practice. and therein lies the problem. stuck at asu, surrounded by idiots, in classes which, despite their upper-division nature, fail to get more than a few brain cells rubbing together while the rest of the gray matter sits there, idle and bored, i sometimes think that i'd be better off telling the academic world to stuff it and spending my class time in the gym. at least that way, i know i'd be doing something that was good for me.

it's really a sort of never-ending dilemma - i go to school, i get bored, i drop out, i get bored, i go back to school, and so on and so forth until death do us part. i need to go come up with a better solution.

Date: 2003-11-25 00:19
Subject: cleaners for christ??
on my way to class this morning (well, technically yesterday morning) i saw something rather odd - a van for mastel cleaners, a dry cleaning and laundry company based somewhere in the phoenix area. and on the back of the van, it had the following:

"serving the valley and jesus christ"

so i have to wonder... does jesus like starch in his robes?