gotjenkins.com

so, the brettmonster threw a party this weekend. it was killer, and we all were tanked.

we all being myself, laura, sean, steve, brett, julie, julia, rowe, jeff & co., ashli, and irene.

anyhow, we’re all getting sauced up and havin a good old time, when brett, for whatever reason, punches a wall and things get all out of control.

http://www.gotjenkins.com/brettmonster/beer.jpg

the beer. we started off with 12 cases of beer – enough to fill two bathtubs – of hieny, bud light, and michelobe light. we also had 2 bottles of baileys, a bottle of malibu rum, hald of a fifth of captain morgan private stock (for me), and a fifth of appleton estate (also for me.)

http://www.gotjenkins.com/brettmonster/criminal.jpg

criminal intent. sean and murph getting boozed. i dont remember taking this picture, but i left the camera laying out, so someone else must have snapped a bunch of pictures.

http://www.gotjenkins.com/brettmonster/wall.jpg

the result. i’m not really sure what caption this picture really needs/deserves. this was done by brett, steve, and sean – hopefully i’m not forgetting anyone.

http://www.gotjenkins.com/brettmonster/floor.jpg

the floor of the room. this is the floor of the bathroom.

http://www.gotjenkins.com/brettmonster/debris.jpg

closeup of the remnants again, self explanitory. it should also be noted that sean actually went into this bathroom (using the door ) and used it later on in the night.

http://www.gotjenkins.com/brettmonster/window.jpg

the arc window. this is the arc window that was on top of the wall – you can see in the first picture right where it was at. towards the end, this window fell from the ceiling and almost landed on stevo. it’s a lot heavier than it looks, too.

anyway, that’s my story and i’m sticking to it. i’ll put up all the photos in a gallery when i’m done with this school shit – there’s quite a few more than what i’ve posted here.

Since Jenks seems to be way too busy to ever update this site, I thought I’d post a quick update for those of you (like me) who check for updates every day and don’t want to feel like tools every time you come here and find that (as usual) Jenks has nothing new to report.

The problem? I’m definitely not way too busy to update Brian’s site (I mean, I had the time to figure out how to hijack his greymatter account, did I not? , but I don’t have all that much to report about his life. But here’s something interesting I learned from him this evening: Brian says that, according to Waldo, “Pantala Naga Pampa” does not mean “Welcome to our Home,” as everyone had previously thought. Apparently, “Pantala Naga Pampa” comes from some Native American language, and means “There is a Python in My Pants.” Which I’m glad I know, since I had always wondered how to say that. This and other monumentally useful information can be found in the new version of the Nancies FAQ, which is extremely comprehensive.

Other exciting news from Brian? He fell in love with yet another guitar, he’s been bored at work lately because “not that many people want to come see animals hibernate,” and he has a really nice (albeit stolen) digital camera.

Yeah, I guess you can see why he rarely ever has anything of interest to post here. (I’m kidding Brian! I love you!)

Okay, I’m outta here, before Brian figures out that I’ve broken into his site and boots me before I can post this. Happy Thanksgiving, kids!

-Lauren
Continue reading ‘Taking Matters into My Own Hands…’ »

“On my part, it would be a sell-out move, because it’s not what I want to do. And I could just sail along into the big time on Dave’s name – John Mayer is totally copping that sound and living off that. I’ve already gotten what I need from working with Dave, spiritually. But I knew I had to go out and do my own work.” -Tim Reynolds, Re: Collaborating w/ DMB.

and speaking of DMB, shambro put up a ‘what DMB member are you?’ quiz…

“As Dave, you’re outgoing yet deeply troubled on the inside. Your warm and welcoming exterior is usually the introduction to a deep person who’s got some problems and a wonderful perspective on society. ”
brought to you by Quizilla

before i get started, let me just say that i came from james’ site a few minutes ago, and he has a banner ad at the top of the page. it’s for some dvd rental shit… it flashes a couple of phrases across the top: “rent dvd’s online”, “no late fees.”

i definately thought that “over 11,000 titles” said “over 11,000 titties.” anyhow…

once again, i’ve been busy as shit the last few days… things have finally cooled down for a while though, so here’s one of those recap-type thangs…

my knee has been fucking KILLING me… i don’t know what’s wrong with it, but every couple months my right knee just starts throbbing non-stop. time to start a drug regiment again… either that, or start drinking heavily.

it finally happened. after all my traffic stops (see the stories section if you don’t remember – 37 in a 35, liscense plate light out, 73 in a 60, speed, etc…) i finall got a ticket. two of them actually. one for rolling a stop sign and one for not having my insurance card (if you recall, i went to aerosmith and had the contents of my wallet destroyed in the monsoon-rain, including my insurance card.)

pulled me over, wrote me two tickets, and took my drivers liscense. needless to say, my good friend michael the lawyer is on this one already. gonna cost me a fortune, but it’s better than the insurance company uping my rates.

i just finished a group project for my english class… we had to research and develope a new product and write up a proposal pitching this new product (or service, in this case.) pain. in. the. ass. we came up with a pretty good idea, or at least i think so:

we developed a new service for a pizza delivery place. rent (and deliver) movies in conjunction with food. rent movies, deliver them, and pick them back up in three days – make that stereotypical cheap date real easy – noone has to leave the house for anything… i think we did a damn fine job, considering that 2 of us essentially did the entire project. now i just need to do the emails for the email assignment portion of the class – it’s worth like 20% of the semester, and i’ve done essentially none of them. we’re supposed to mantain conversation on a listserv. oh well, i’ll get caught up somehow… since it’s business related, i’m thinking about pitching my new business idea to the list looking for feedback.

speaking of that. what do y’all think of this? i’m thinking of starting my own business to get a little extra income. i have a converter that can capture VHS tapes (or tv, or any kind of video or audio input, really) and convert the video to DVD/SVCD/VCD quality video. i dont have a DVD burner yet, but i’m thinking that i can charge people x amount and convert their home videos to digital format (since VHS tapes decay and, well, suck.)

here’s what i’ve got so far. $7 for the first disc, $5 for each additional disc – vcd is good quality and can hold 70 minutes on a CDR. SVCD is EXCELLENT quality and can hold around 35 to 40 minutes on a CDR. both vcd’s and svcd’s can be played on almost all recent dvd-players and in cd-rom drives on computers. $10 for a DVD+R when i get the DVD burner.

what do you think? don’t you think people would pay $7 to have their crappy deteriorating VHS tapes converted onto a VCD/SVCD/DVD that is digital, isn’t magnetic, has no tape to be eaten by a VCR, and doesn’t decay with each use? videos of of weddings, little sister playing soccer, and christmas with great-grandma and shit like that?

i think so, especially since the lowest price i could find it for on the internet was $15 to $20. i saw some prices as high as $45 a DISC. i think i could make a little money off of it, and save some people a little heartache in the long run, too.

for whatever it’s worth, i’m also converting bootleg concert videos to VCD/SVCD as well.

let me know what you think – too much? not enough? worth it? interested? know anyone who is?

maybe i’ll try to put up a cheapie website with some sample video clips so people can check out the quality.

oh, by the way, i’m looking for a program i can use to manage my live show collection. now that db.etree.org has gone down once, it can surely go down again, and i’d like to be able to maintain an accurate database on my computer in the instance that db.etree.org goes down and loses my information, or doesn’t come back up at all. if you know of one, let me know before i go and program my own.

and if you’ve got any ideas/questions/comments/smart remarks about the video business, please drop me a line, i’m looking for any and all input.

sorry ’bout the lack of updates lately… been busy as hell… life winds back down for me tomorrow, i’ll make sure to hit y’all up with a recap of the last week or so.

in the meantime, i saw this in someone’s signature on ‘the bridge’ and i thought it was funny:

“Everyone knows that the best job you can get in America right now, besides unemployment, is being a dumbass. Getting drunk and driving your car into a lake can make you a millionaire. First you sue the bar for getting you drunk, then you sue the car manufacturer for not making cars that turn into boats, and while you’re sinking to the bottom, I’m pretty sure Red Lobster is financially responsible if any fish make scary faces at you.”

speaking of my fishing trip, i was watching tv in the hotel room late saturday nightg when i saw live coverage of the ashland, va sniper attack, and i started to realize just how much fucked up stuff has happened in recent years.

recent being 10 or so, i suppose – this isn’t really chronological or anything, it’s just a list. i’m really just kind of shooting from the hip.

OJ’s murder trial, the unabomber, david koresh and the branch davidians, princess di, clinton’s pecker, the oklahoma city bombing, the mailbox bomber, columbine (and other random school shootings,) the south side rapist (at least in the st. louis neck of the woods,) september 11th (most obviously)…

…and now we’ve got all this bullshit about the sniper. random killings, no pattern, no commonalities between victim, absolutely nothing. isn’t that fucked up? we don’t even know what to be looking for in a suspect. it could be some whacked out 19 year old kid who’s pissed at the world, or it could be some 38 year old ex-militant who snapped.

it’s just a big game for this guy. every time the cops or the media say something, he just changes his pattern to fuck with us. the cops say that schools are safe and he shoots a middle school. the news starts talking about how he stays within 60 miles of dc and doesn’t strike on weekends, and he shoots up a ponderosa 90 miles south of cd on a saturday night.

sick fucker. maybe we just need to start talking about how he’s not suicidal and he won’t ever take a long walk off a short bridge. tool.

and now he’s leaving notes and shit… “i am god” and demands for millions of dollars.

part of me hopes that when they find him, some cop sneaks up behind, puts the barrel of a glock right up to his brainstem and blows him into next tuesday. another part of me hopes that we catch him so that we can figure out how and why he’s doing this and how we caught him. another part of me hopes that we just fucking kill him right on the scene so that he doesn’t go through our legal system and we don’t wind up paying tons of tax money to put this psycho through the courts and have him plead insanity.

yet another part of me hopes that he slips on a pencil and smashes his head on a fire hydrant.

i had to turn off cnn in the hotel room – if i heard the weasel news anchor say “modus apperandi” one more time i was going to be sick.

so, i went fishing with my dad this weekend @ lake of the ozarks. here’s the play-by-play, along with my post-weekend observations.

day 1: we left late in the morning, about 9:00, and grabbed breakfast on the way out. traffic was HORRENDOUS. what should have taken us less than three three hours took us almost five after everything was said and done. we checked in at the resort, loaded up in the boat, and headed out. needless to say, it started raining almost immediately, so we sat in the boat till sundown fishing. i caught 14 fish (2 bluegill, 3 bass, 9 crappie – no keepers.) dad caught ~20, 3 keepers. we brought it back in about 6:00 and went for dinner. first place we stopped at was this place called dominicos, which is apparently the ozark equivilant of, say, cunnetos. they had an all you can eat prime rib special, so it sounded like the place i wanted to eat at. we walked in only to find out it was a 45 minute wait and 22 bucks a head – fuck that. so we went to some mexican dive joint down the block for a fraction of the price. i had tacos with jalapenos – not what i expected, because the jalapenos were fresh cut and not pickled – so it tasted like i was eating tacos covered in little napalm chunks.

day 2: dad woke up and started fishing at 5:30, i slept till about 10:00 and watched tv – for whatever reason, they had 6 episodes of mash on in a row. dad came in and said that the fishing sucked (it was too windy) and we went to lunch. we went to the salty dog, which is one of the better places to eat in the ozarks, and it’s a nice atmosphere to boot. i had a burger and played some pull tabs (and won $5). then we went and hit up the ten cent skeeball booth on the way back to the cabin. we had a nice little skeeball tournament going on. we went back and forth, i was 3 games up, 2 games down, tied, 1 game up, tied, blah blah. ultimately, i lost by 1 game (310-250), but i used my tickets to buy some neat novelty giant dice and a chinese finger trap. went fishing for a while (i caught 2 bass, 2 bluegill, 2 crappie,) and went to dinner. dinner was going to be at pasta house, but we didn’t feel like waiting the 40 minute wait, and so went to salty dog for the second time in one day.

day 3: i woke up about 9, sat in our hotel room’s jacuzzi for a while, packed up my stuff, and checked out. oh, i also had to dispose of a dead chipmunk that a cat left on our neighbors doorstep. he was cute, it made me sad that the stupid cat killed it. time for round 2 of skeeball. we played 15 games each. i started out pretty rough and dad started with 250s. by the end, dad was pulling 150s and i was pulling 280s. i also pulled my all-time record of 310. i gave our 65 prize tickets to some little girl who wasn’t strong enough to roll the ball all the way up to the holes. we left and headed for home.

fishing is the closest i could ever come to hunting. i couldn’t hunt. hell, i feel bad killing bugs sometimes.

don’t get me wrong, i’ve never considered myself an animal activist, but i just find something wrong with the way the whole thing works.

anyhow, i dig catching fish. it’s fun. but i don’t like keeping them. little fish are cool because i throw them back, but catching big fish sucks. you catch them, and then throw them in a cooler full of ice. it’s not so bad up to this point. anyway, you throw the fish into the cooler and it flops around in the ice and it flops around and bangs into the cooler sides until it’s frozen alive in the ice.

just seems a little barbaric, i suppose. at least in hunting when you clean your catch, it’s already dead.

anyhow, on a more upbeat note, i’m thinking about getting a fish tank. i don’t know what size tank, or what kind of fish, or any of that crap, but i think it would be cool (especially since my parents aren’t willing to let me have rats.) if you have any suggestions or ideas, i’m willing to entertain them – i’m looking for fish that are at least a little asthetically pleasing.

oh yeah! speaking of rats! laura’s rat lil’ sneezer had babies… they really are cute as hell. they’re about 6 weeks old right now, and they’re getting YOUGE. they’re smart as hell, too… there’s eight of them (there were nine, but one died during birth), and they’re all named but one.

one more thing. peacock – you get your package yet?

anyhow, yeah, i think that’s enough for one sitting.
Continue reading ‘fishing for rat babies gone fishing’ »

so, i’ve once again started to neglect my updates. which is a bummer, because i initially had planned on posting something every day.

but i’m determined now, so hopefully i’ll keep up with it

a la escuela
———–
i’ve been ROCKING my tests lately. out of all my bullshit tests and assignments, i’ve scored a 94 (on ops management, no less – ill pass that bastard this time!), two 82’s, a 100% on my marketing case study, and 10 out of 10 on all my programming shite. the only thing that has me tripping right now is that in my marketing class, i’ve missed 70 poins right off the bat quizzes and assignments that happened while i was in kansas city. 70 points doesnt sound like a lot, but it’s 10% of the semester. so i need to keep up on that shit or it’s going to get real ugly, real quick.

oh, and the emails for my english class. haven’t been keeping up with that, either. but thats another story. hopefully i’ll be able to catch up on that tonight or tomorrow.

i still don’t know whats up with me and school lately. i just cant get moticated, and i have no idea what i want to do with my life anymore. i’m almost thinking about hitting up culinary school or bartender college. but i just really don’t want to go out and get a real job and start a career and all that crap. i know that it’s time, but i just don’t feel ready for it. guess i’m going to have to milk this ‘full time student’ thing for all it’s worth.

i’ll deal with it later – seems to be my motto lately.

on another random note, i took my shitty old electric guitar back last week. i borrowed it from colin, and he gave it to me when he moved to webster groves. anyhow, i let laura borrow it when she started getting interested in playing, and she has had it ever since. she’s got a martin now, so i took it back.

anyway, i’m sanding the paint off and ripped the electronics out, and i’m going to install some new pickups and shit, give it a paint job, all that stuff. hopefully i can take a guitar worth less than $20 and turn it into something cool… i hope so, at least, because i really like playing it. it’s got fast neck that’s real easy to play, and it’d be cool as shit if it actually worked when plugged in.

that’s it from me for now. i’m being kicked out of the lab by the MIS nazi once again.

this one’s for peacock, since his shit is so outdated.

musical instruments can now be found in ‘gear,’ located on the nav bar.

pay close attention to the wood duck and the cosmic hippo on top of the amp.
Continue reading ‘this one’s for peacock’ »

why are the people at (d)umsl so stupid? for example:

if something happens and you don’t have your parking permit with you, you can go to the office and get a temporary sticker. why does the lady at the office ask you “is this for today?” they’re only good for the day of issue! i said “actually, i’ll need one on monday, too,” and she said “well, you can only get them for a day at a time. you’ll have to come back monday.”

what the hell is the point of asking me if it’s “for today”? do i really pay $20 a credit hour to park to pay this person’s salary?

the (d)umsl lunchroom used to take 4 forms of payment – cash, check, student charge (which would add the total to your tuition bill,) and credit card. every year i’ve been here they’ve dropped one of them so that now they’re down to just cash (which is INSANE – we’re COLLEGE KIDS. we don’t have any fucking money, we already gave it all to you!)

so why the hell, when you walk up with a tray of food, do they say, “will this be cash?” when cash is the ONLY thing they accept? “will this be cash?” “no, i was thinking i’d pay with juju coins today.”

speaking of the morons running umsl. the bookstore used to take student charge, with a limit of $500 at a time. so this year, the geniuses in charge decided to only use a $400 limit, and not accept it after the first week of school.

that’s CRAP. let’s do the math here. most students take 15 hours a semester – about 5 classes, assuming 3 hours per class. books for any given class will average around $100, tack on a little more for computer classes and sciences. 5 classes, $100 a pop… $500. and, oh yeah, $400 < $500.

so i'm taking 12 hours this semester (just like every semester.) my books came to $496. which is also more than $400. i walk up to the counter, i set down my massive pile of books, and i hand the cashier my student charge, not knowing the change in policy. she rings up my books, swipes my student card, and then tells me that my student charge has been declined because i am over my $400 limit. here's how THAT conversation went:

jenks: "so, how am i supposed to get the rest of my books?"
cashier: "don't you have any money?"
j: "no, no i don't. i just spent it all on a $240 parking permit."
c: "well, i'm sorry, but i can only put $400 on the card. you'll either have to put a book back, or find some other way to pay for it."
j: "fuck it, put it on my credit card."
c: "are you sure that's what you want to do?"
j: "what am i supposed to do, really not buy a required book for a class?"
c: "i don't know, i just wouldn't want to put it on a credit card if i were you."
j: "oh, it's okay, i'll get the money back at the end of the semester when i sell these $100 books back for seven dollars a piece."

more to come. i'm being kicked out of the classroom by the MIS nazi again.
Continue reading ‘random rants and raves’ »