Rob J. Foxxx

Wha Wha Whaa... <--- Trombone noise...

2005-09-28T15:22:00.000-07:00

Well... I quit my job today. That may sound stupid to some people who I know that are desperatley looking for a job. I was making 10 an hour at my current position working in an office doing data entry. Now I'll be making 15/hr working from home doing appointment setting. I was happy with my job, my boss, my co-workers. etc. I felt like the company was gonna drag out giving me a raise forever. See I was hired by a temp. agency and I was supposed to get hired on to the compaby after 3 months. Well it's been almost 5 months and no hire and no raise. I started looking for a new job... and I found one. Sucks I had to abandon my cool boss. Even he admited though... You gotta look out for #1 sometimes. If I ever do wanna be #1 I wasn't gonna do it sitting in that office. It's off into the world again. Starting a new job. Better income and better grades! That's the goal for this year. Wish me luck!

Sacrificing Comfort and Security For Progression...

2005-09-26T15:05:00.000-07:00

I'm at a point in my life where I am relatively comfortable with my job and money situation. I make about 10/hr at my current position, which was supposed to be "temp to hire" after 3 months. Well it's going on almost 4 months with this company and I don't see me getting hired anytime in the near future. That is unless I decide to drop out of school and dedicate my immediate future the company (I have no plans to do so). So I have been offered another postition making 15$/hr with the potential to make a considerable amount more than that within the first 3 or 4 months. This job though involved working from home, and a considerable amount of less job security. Althought, if I was to not last that long I always have my position at HanR Block in Jan.-Apr. I think I'm at a point in my life where I need to take that dive and go for the risk. I see myself so often being satisfied with mediocrity, which is something I'm changing in many aspects of my life. For instance I plan on taking most of the community college I took and passed with a "C" over again, to boost my GPA. I've moved out of my moms house, I've quit drinking. I think it's a good thing that I look back to this time last year, and I deff. think my life is on a much better "track" than it was last year. Now that I'm doing so much better, do I want to incur all the risks that are involved in quitting a job to start a new one? Well I was watching a documentary on Kanye West last night. I know that sounds kind of pathetic to idolize a musician of all things, but he took a lot of risks in his life that people thought were crazy at the time. Like dropping out of school to pursue his rap career and dropping everything and moving to LA. I guess I decided that being comfortable is good, but it takes risks to achiever your dreams... I think that in the long run this will be a good decision. I love my boss. And I feel bad that he spent all that time training me, only to have me quit. He himself told me at one time though that you have to be selfish because nobody else is gonna be selfish for you. So... check back to see the outcome!

Wow...

2005-09-21T15:24:00.000-07:00

I just realized this moment that I haven't touched a drop of alcohol in one month exactly. It was August 21st that I stopped drinking. I haven't decided when I can start drinking again. It's so weird "quitting" something you like. It's such a weird feeling, like everytime I use to go into a store I would buy booze, just for principle. Now... It's like I look at the beer, and I want it. I know I could buy it. But I know I shouldn't and I don't. It is truly a weird thing that I think only a real addict could understand. I still have been smoking weed
every once in a while. But the money I've been saving on not buying weed and beer is pretty large. Also the time I'm spending being coherent allows me to fit in more time studying. As of now, I'm doing much better in school then i've been doing in a long while...

Tedium of Responsability...

2005-09-08T16:50:00.000-07:00

man... my new school schedule sucks ass! Pour about a gallon of weak sauce on that shit! I start my day at 7:20am and am not leaving school until 7:45. Tue. and Thur. are now my officially most hated days of the week. In a way I think it will force me to get some homework done in these hour and a half periods I spent stuck in boredom between classes. Soon this hell will be over. It will be nice to take classes that actually have something to do with my major. What is that by the way? Well... I guess I'll worry about that s later. Until Then. AWAY!

Life... Happy Moments That Keep You Alive Long Enough To Eventually Expose You To Great Pain, Tricky Fuck!

2005-09-07T14:24:00.000-07:00

I don't know why the title is so sad. I'm actually in a relatively good mood this afternoon. Only thing that sucks is that my gf is sick :( Goin' to the good ol' urgent care this afternoon to see what's the matter. I gave in and bought weed this weekend. I felt like a jack ass afterards. First of all I can't afford that shit, evethough I only spent 15$. I started school this week which will cut my income by 2/5'th's it's normal small amount. I am in no place to be wasting $$$. Also, weed f's me up when it comes to school. If I have pot I'll be high and I won't get shit done, like; homework, studying, etc. I have like one bowl left, which i'm probably gonna smoke when i get home.... Then I'm done! Buying weed. The drinking thing hasn't been that difficult, but weed is gonna be much harder. My whole not drinking thing will be tested this Friday, I'm going to my first "party" since I quit drinking. And chances are everyone will be drunk except for me! But I'm not too worried about it. I get to hang out with a bunch of cool ass old friends from highschool and go looking for ghosts at midnight @ the mission inn. For all of you not familiar with the Mission Inn, it is an OLD ass hotel in downtown Riverside. If your still curious than google that shit. I'm not an f'ing historian... Or are I?(Bad grammar intended)
Hmm... Nothing else that exciting happening in my life since the last time I posted. I watched an S load of the Simpsons and Family Guy on my computer because I have no cable. I get cable tonight though, hopefully, because my gf said she is gonna take me to Radio Shaq(lol) and buy all the cables and splitters and shit to give myself cable. Hurrah! So anyways next time I talk to you all will be after my IQ has officially been lowered a couple points due to my gf forcing me to watch MTV at my house. Oh Man. Peace in the EasT!

Sad Day...

2005-09-02T11:16:00.000-07:00

It's kind of difficult to not think about the flood victims today. The question that this raises is where is the federal government. You always hear about these training exercises the federal government conducts preparing for a terrorist attack. Now a national emergency has occured and it's obvious that we aren't anywhere near as prepared as the government would have us believe. The topic of racism keeps popping it's head up in this disaster. From the two identical pictures of people taking things from a store, one white and one black. The whiter person is described as taking things they found, the black person described as a looter. I can't help but wonder if the fact that a large percentage of the population in trouble in Louissiana is black has anything to do with the governments slowness to react. I don't think the issue would be race as much as economic status. Does the government care about the health of the poor as much as that of the rich? It isn't likely that most poor people vote or pay taxes as consistenly as a "richer" person. I don't think we can ever know the difficulties involved in helping deal with a disaster like this. I hope I nor anyone I know ever has to. I hope that everything is being done that's possible to help these people.

Am I Too Old For My JC???

2005-09-01T12:30:00.000-07:00

Man, I'm retaking a Biology 101 type class this semester. I took it during my very first semester in Fall of 02 and I received a "D". Now I realize how fucking old I am attending a fucking Community College. I seriously need to make this my last semester before transferring. Pretty soon I'm gonna be the creepy old guy wandering around campus... So I'm determined to ace this semester and get the fuck outta dodge. Go out with a bang. Pop pop goes the weesel. So anywho, I'm at school all day. I gotta say it is a little less boring that work. I think I'm gonna start finding interviews with people that I think are intersting. I read one with Gilbert Godfried and I wanna try to find some more. Wonder what the audio capabilities of this site are??? Hmm. Anywho. Aloha

Seems Normal @ First Viewing

2005-08-31T14:24:00.000-07:00

Once you get over the fact that my friend Chris is embracing a rather large unnatractive girl, this picture seems normal. But look up close... Who is that creepy bearded black guy in the background??? So strange!

Hurricane Katrina Aftermath...

2005-08-31T08:32:00.000-07:00

Seth McFarlane Interview... Awesome

2005-08-30T15:13:00.000-07:00

SethMacFarlane
Interviewed by Nathan Rabin
January 26th, 2005

The Onion: Now that you have two shows, you're officially a TV mogul.

Seth MacFarlane: Yeah, it's interesting. I don't feel like one. Hopefully that doesn't scare away the funny.

O: It's got to be kind of amazing to think that DVD technology, which was just getting started when you began Family Guy, would help bring it back from the dead.

SM: I had always thought maybe, if we were lucky, we would get a shot at doing a direct-to-DVD feature or something. But as far as new episodes, that was the thing that took me by surprise. It's unheard of for a network to reverse a decision about cancellation, for no other reason, usually, than ego. Luckily for us, Fox is thinking in a business way rather than an ego way. It's good.

O: Once you saw the DVD sales and the Cartoon Network ratings, was an uncancellation ever in the back of your mind?

SM: No, no. Only in a "Boy, wouldn't that be cool, but it'll never actually happen" kind of way. There was a lot of press coming out about the show topping Leno and Letterman, and the DVD selling really well, and I thought "Maybe there will be some additional life for the show that will come out of this." But Fox had told us for so long that they were finished with the show. Certainly they were not expecting this kind of response to the DVD and the reruns. Even with all that was going on, I never in a million years would have thought that they would actually order more episodes.

O: You came up with Family Guy's voices before the character designs, right?

SM: Yeah. For the most part, at least for the characters that I voice on the show, that's usually how it works. I find it easier to come up with the personality first, figure out who the character is, then do the drawing after the fact. Stewie's head, for example, is shaped the way it is for no particular reason other than that was how the voice sounded like it should look. It's usually the voice and the personality that comes first.

O: He sounded like he should have a football-shaped head?

SM: [Laughs.] I sat at my desk, trying out different designs and different bizarre-looking head and body shapes. That one emerged as what the character sounded like he should look like.

O: How did you end up doing so many voices on the show?

SM: Part of it was the fact that there was no money, initially. Part of it is that it's just the way I like to work. I like the freedom of being able to just get in there and do it myself. To look at a storyboard and be involved with what the visual acting looks like, as well as the voice acting, is nice. It frees me up to do jokes that are maybe unconventional that need to be done an exact, specific way, that can only be done by involvement with both parts of the process.

O: Did it seem strange that instead of giving you the normal million-dollar budget for an animated pilot, Fox gave you $50,000?

SM: It didn't, because a) I didn't know any better at the time, and b) I figured I was the new guy, I had no credits, and "Whatever it takes, I'll pull this off." It was a pretty exciting carrot to dangle in front of an animator. I wasn't in a position to say, "Well, I'm not sure I want to do that, I'll hold out for more money." The opportunity was there, and I didn't know if it would ever come again.

O: Did you ever think, "Wow, maybe this is too good to be true, I'm 23 years old and have a show on TV"?

SM: In retrospect, yes, but it was strictly out of naïveté that I thought, "Oh, okay, I guess it's just this easy." In retrospect, so much of it was timing and what I was bringing them, when I was bringing it to them, who the people were in charge. There were so many factors that contributed to the good luck. It seemed, despite the amount of work, to turn the pilot in and then have it picked up for 13 episodes was all I knew. I didn't even know what the sitcom process was until I started producing the episodes with the other executive producer at the time, David Zuckerman, who had worked on King Of The Hill. I had to learn from him—and the other writers who had worked on other shows—what the process was, how you break a story, what the time constraints were. Really knowing nothing about it going in, it didn't occur to me at the time that this was as unlikely as it was.

O: Didn't you have other people auditioning for some of the voices? William H. Macy auditioned for the role of Brian the dog—that must have been kind of surreal.

SM: It was. For someone like me, who hadn't dealt with celebrities, it was a little jarring. But it's funny how quickly you get used to that. It was a lot faster than I thought it would be. Now, we've had some terrific people on the show. Drew Barrymore has done a couple of episodes. James Woods is playing himself. The school on the show is called James Woods High, and he got wind of that and thought it was funny and wanted to do the show. We were obviously thrilled, so we wrote an episode around him. Kiss has done the show, Haley Joel Osment.

O: Didn't Osment do a bunch of shows back in his pre-fame years?

SM: He did. You know what was funny—at one point, I think The Sixth Sense had come out, but he was still coming into Family Guy to say the line, "Oh no, Cavity Creeps!" In retrospect, it's like, "God, why was he wasting his time with us?" Family Guy has this weird thing of attracting people. People either hate it or can't get enough of it. There's really no one in between. There doesn't seem to be any group that can take it or leave it. It's either, "I laugh my ass off start to finish, it's my favorite show," or "You guys are pathetic." Ken Tucker, for example, would be one of [the latter]. He would write these venom-spewing articles about Family Guy in Entertainment Weekly that, oddly enough, I could never figure out where it was coming from, because there was never a specific argument beyond "This show sucks and it's not funny." But what's nice is that at this point, there are a lot of high-profile actors who are fans of the show, and it's a little easier for us to bring those people on than it used to be.

O: How did Adam West become the mayor?

SM: I wrote on a show called Johnny Bravo when I was at Hanna-Barbera, and he guest-starred as himself. He was so funny, and he's got this way about him. I think he likes playing into what he's known for, even on a casual basis. He's a really fun guy to work with, and genuinely gets comedy. It's not the type of situation where you just bring somebody in to make fun of themselves. The character we've created is kind of this alternate-universe Adam West where he's mayor of this town, and we deliberately have not made any references to Batman, because we like keeping that separate. It's the obvious place to go. We tried it, we thought it would be funny to do something different with the mayor of this town. People like Clint Eastwood and Martin Sheen who have taken whacks at this sort of thing—there's a precedent for it, actors getting into politics. He's the mayor, but he's this guy who clearly does not have it all together. The first couple episodes we did, we got a great response from fans in their teens, who I can't imagine, necessarily, know who he is from the old Batman show. He's one of the characters we get the most requests for more of. It's nice, because to me it means we've built a funny character around him that doesn't just play off of the fact that he's a celebrity. He's playing himself, but he's not playing himself.

O: You've talked a lot about The Simpsons as a formative inspiration. You're on the same network; do you have a relationship with the series?

SM: Apparently they hate our guts. I'm not sure why. I've said this before, but that show, at its best, is up there with the best episodes of All In The Family, Mary Tyler Moore, and Dick Van Dyke, I think. I was reading a quote from one of the writers, from a lecture that he gave, that said "The Simpsons staff hates Family Guy." Who knows why? I'm not losing any sleep over it.

O: There have been a couple of references to Family Guy on The Simpsons, but it's not clear whether they were fond, paying homage, or—

SM: [Laughs.] I don't think they were paying homage. The other side of that is, for us to make a stink about that would make us the biggest fucking hypocrites in the world. Like, you gotta take it if you're going to dish it out. They certainly have every right to slam us in any way they please.

O: On one of the commentary tracks for the Simpsons DVDs, they said they stopped doing flashbacks and non sequiturs because they felt that was Family Guy's terrain. You affected the evolution of The Simpsons.

SM: That's interesting, because that style is something that they kind of started. What we did was make it kind of the main course of our show. It's more par for the course on a weekly basis.

O: When you started out, were you worried about the similarities between the two shows?

SM: We got that criticism early on, and I think any animated show that comes along is inevitably going to be compared to The Simpsons. King Of The Hill was compared to The Simpsons, and is clearly its own show in its own right. It's not even close. Stylistically, the way we tell our stories, we're more like The Simpsons than King Of The Hill. They set a new style of animated show, just like Seinfeld. I believe Friends was a result of the new Seinfeld sensibility on sitcoms. You're certainly influenced by people who changed the terrain before you. Initially, there was criticism that the shows were too similar. I think as we went along, that went away, and people started to see it for what it was. Absolutely, we were influenced by The Simpsons. We'd be stupid not to be. They put that out there: "Here's how you do it. Visually, storytelling-wise, timing-wise, editing-wise. This is how it works." And we took a cue from that.

O: Do you strive to make Family Guy as little like The Simpsons as possible?

SM: No. I think at this point, we don't have to. It is its own thing. As far as breaking new ground, as far as the types of jokes that we do, doing a fight scene with Peter and a giant chicken that goes on for two straight minutes, I think we've kind of taken it to the next level. The show now absolutely has its own voice. We don't want to do the same stories as they have. Every once in a while, a story will come up and somebody will say, "Well, you know, The Simpsons did an episode like that a few years back." That's really the only time it comes up. We want the show to be as good, if not better. Particularly when you hear that [the Simpsons] staff hates our guts. It's obviously a good motivator to do as good a show as possible.

O: The audio commentaries for The Critic discuss how Fox encouraged the creators to make all the characters more attractive between the first and second season. Did you ever get any pressure from Fox to make the characters more pleasing to the eye?

SM: Not with Family Guy. A little bit with American Dad, because there are more eyes on it. To me, who the hell wants to look at an attractive cartoon character? The Simpsons are ugly-looking, and they should be. That's what works. That's one of the things that's funny.

O: Do you think ugly drawings are inherently funnier than attractive ones?

SM: I think so. I think the way [The Far Side's] Gary Larson used to draw, there was something just inherently funny about the way those characters looked. It's the same thing. Those bulbous eyes that would just stare blankly and you had no idea what was going on in the head of the character. I remember reading somewhere about someone on The Simpsons saying that when a character is being addressed or spoken to, they always prefer to keep them emotionless, with a blank stare, rather than give them reactions. It's just a great rule of thumb that I absolutely took to heart for this show. It's just funnier. A dumb-looking character standing there, staring blankly, is much funnier—and cheaper—than a character mugging. The other end of the spectrum is the Disney/Warner Bros. style of very lush animation, where people just don't stop moving. Everything is played to the hilt. I prefer to go the other way, and I think that's something that is inherently funny to look at. When a dumb-looking character is standing there, you don't know how they're registering the information that's being fed to them. It's funny.

O: On one Family Guy commentary track, you talk about shifting Stewie's character's emphasis away from taking over the world toward sexual confusion and angst. Was that conscious?

SM: Not really. It was something that kind of emerged in the writers' room. In the fourth season, we've kept an eye on not completely losing his origins. There are a couple of episodes where he hearkened back to classic Stewie, because we realized that we want to keep the sexual confusion, but we want to balance it with the old Machiavellian Stewie. That's one thing that on the third season, we may have strayed a little too far away from. What we did was good, I think, but the idea is to keep both sides of his personality alive.

O: So now he wants to take over half the world.

SM: Right. Like recently, we began an episode with him trying to kill Lois, which we realized was something we hadn't done in a long time.

O: Do you think it makes him more sympathetic that he's more confused than power-mad?

SM: I think so. I think a lot of it is how small he is physically. I think you can get away with a lot if a character is... The best example I can think of is Herbert, the creepy old man who's always hassling Chris. This guy is basically a pervert, and if he looked any other way, he would not be the least bit funny. But the fact that he's so old, and so decrepit, and has a walker, and can barely move on his own, makes it funny and makes it work. I think it's the same thing with Stewie. Because he's a baby, pretty much everything is forgivable.

O: When you conceived the show, did you think of him as being a breakout character?

SM: No, no. I was very surprised. I thought that maybe Peter would be the character people would respond to—and they have—but really, Stewie and Brian have been the ones that have tested the highest. Stewie was a surprise, because I thought that maybe a small group of people would be amused by him, but he's such a bizarre character, that if they weren't, then it's all right, because he wasn't going to be a major character. But when he emerged as the breakout character, then there became the task of figuring out different types of stories to do with this baby.

O: Your commentary tracks for the Family Guy DVDs were reportedly heavily edited for content. Why? What kind of stuff got cut out?

SM: We had all this beer in the recording room, so I'm trying to remember what it was we said. I don't remember. I think at one point I went off on a rant about this local newscaster in California whose politics I didn't care for. I think more than anything, it was swearing, which is surprising that it would be a problem.

O: It seems unusually spare.

SM: It is, and a lot of [the tracks] were cut out, and there are a lot of long gaps where they edited out stuff. I tried to get a hold of their legal head at one point, and I didn't have a whole lot of luck.

O: There isn't much laughter on the Family Guy commentaries.

SM: A lot of it was that we'd seen them all a hundred times. There weren't too many surprises. I think we were conscious of saying things that weren't remotely interesting. So much of commentary is just so fucking boring. People are clearly sitting there, very monotone, alone in this dark room. The only commentary I've ever listened to start to finish was Michael Crichton's for The Great Train Robbery, which was so unbelievably interesting. There was all this really interesting cultural information about Victorian England. He's obviously a fucking brilliant guy, but I guess that era was a passion of his. It was like listening to a guy give a lecture at a college or something. But I'm always amazed when someone tells me they've listened to the Family Guy commentary, like, "Really? You could honestly sit through that?"

O: One of the episodes on the third-season DVD is "When You Wish Upon A Weinstein." It was surprising that it didn't air—it seemed sweeter and less offensive than almost any other Family Guy episode.

SM: Absolutely. It was made out to be much worse than it was. It wasn't really the episode itself, it was the political battle that took place at Fox. There were two groups of people. There were the people who were saying "Absolutely no way," and people who were saying, "No, no, this is great." It went so far as us getting letters from rabbis who we had sent the episode to saying, "Yes, it's a little on the edge, but he learns the right lesson in the end, it's probably okay." We would send those letters to Fox. It became this battle of wills between the two sides. It really was an issue. Eventually, the naysayers won out. But that's the absurd thing. You look at an episode like the one with the pope, which skirts much closer to the line of being offensive to Catholics than the Weinstein episode does to Jews.

O: One interesting paradox is that the worse things are for the public as a whole, the better they are for satirists, because they have that much more to work from. Do you think that helps a show like American Dad?

SM: Yeah. There are people on staff who have made that point, that the upside to a second Bush term is that it makes American Dad work better. To me, the price is too high. I would gladly give up the comedy to have a President Kerry. But you work with what you have.

O: You were scheduled to travel on one of the planes used in the 9/11 attacks. Did the fact that you were nearly part of it affect how you viewed the subsequent fallout?

SM: Not especially. I'm not a fatalist. I'm not a religious person. I'm sure there are close calls that we're not even aware of hundreds of times a year. You cross the street, and if you'd crossed the street two minutes later, you'd have been hit by a car, but you'd never know it. I'm sure that kind of stuff happens all the time. This was obviously a big one. What I felt more than anything else was gratitude toward my travel agent for screwing up my itinerary. It didn't change my perspective on what I do or anything like that. I couldn't really let it. You gotta keep the funny intact.

O: You didn't resolve to make the most of every moment?

SM: No, no. If anything, I started drinking more.

Trying a New Format...

2005-08-30T08:39:00.000-07:00

Now this "thing" is seriously disturbing. Somone put the head of a fetus, wings of a seagull, and the body of a cat together. Beautiful... Man, art is strange.

Hurricane killed at least 80 people so far in Lousisiana. But the VMA's still got better ratings than the hurricane coverage. You gotta love that shit.

Click the Cow! Mmm.. Weed MILK

Part of an article speaking about the power of hurricanes doubling dur to global warming:

Tropical storms may be growing in overall intensity due to human-induced global warming, according to a new study by leading hurricane researcher Kerry Emanuel. His report, which has generated controversy among climate specialists, was published earlier this month in the journal Nature. Emanuel looked comprehensively at storm data since the mid-1970s and concluded that the destructive power of hurricanes has nearly doubled over the past three decades at least partially because of human-induced global warming. Critics of the study say hurricanes are not intensifying and that the cause of the rising ocean temperature is natural, not human-made.

Another Sad Article:
Statistical mapping techniques showed there were at least three times more fast-food restaurants located less than a mile from schools than would be expected if the restaurants had been more randomly distributed. That's sad. I'm gonna blame being overweight on this from now on.

Well so my day begins... Good Day.

Monday's R Whiggity Whack? No, The Regular Kind

2005-08-29T17:05:00.000-07:00

Uneventful Monday afternoon. Yawn. Work flew by. That shows that 8 hours of sleep can make your day a fuck of a lot better. But then again so can diet and exercise. Fuck that s. I think I've decided I'm going to have to quit "buying" weed for a long while, which sucks. I've had to come to terms with a few things.
A. I'm a drug addict
B. I'm poor
C. I'm poor
D. Spending money of weed pisses of my girlfriend royally.

So, I have less than a gram of weed. I know I can make that last a week if I want. Maybe the sooner the better huh. The whole not drinking thing has been really good. There has been a 12 pack of heineken in my fridge staring back at me every time I go to eat, and I've handled that pretty good. To anyone bored enough to read this. Good day.

Week 1

2005-08-28T15:57:00.000-07:00

One week down and a lot more to go. I resolved the "fight" I had with my girfriend yesterday. I was supposed to be at an appointment at 3:00 in Pasadena this afternoon but, luckily, it got canceled. I say luckily because I have no fucking air conditioned transportation and it is 104 F outside this afternoon. So, I'm gonna look into helping my friend market a wedding videography service. I'm excited about hearing this because I've been looking into home business ideas. I also am starting a job selling educational materials from my home office. Hopefully the money ideas starting coming more frequently here as I am basically living paycheck to paycheck. Not a healthy way to have your finances. Also my roommate is starting his own tax service. For all of you who don't know this year will be my 5th year preparing taxes for HandR Block. I wish I would have thought of that idea earlier. I guess it pays off to follow through on your ideas. Maybe I can learn something from him.

Rob J. Foxxx

2005-08-27T10:51:00.000-07:00

Last night was my first "weekend" evening spent not consuming alcohol. Overall there was a slight temptation, moreso than previous few days. I couldn't help shaking this feeling like everyone else was out drinking and partying and somehow I was missing out on something. I am so glad that I have my girlfriend to hang out with and keep me company on these evenings. We got take out and watched a movies as planned. Watched the movie "The Corporation" it is an awesome movie and I recommend it to anyone. It teaches you a great deal about how corporations started during the industrial revolution up until the present day behemoth corporations like Nike and General Electric. I am conflicted about how to go about in the world after seeing that movie. It is almost impossible to buy products you need on a budget without cowtowing to a immoral corporation. Seems almost helpless, but I have made a commitment to be more active in somehow spreading the word about sweat shop labor, and corporate pollution. Well It's only 11am. I'm just waiting till 12 so I can start grilling up some burgers.

Well me and Susan got in a fight this afternoon despite me not drinking. There has been occurences during me and Susan's relationship that have caused me to longer feel welcome in "their" house. Susan left my house 8 this morning telling me that she would be back. At around 12 o' clock I decided since I haven't heard from her I'd call her and see if she wanted me to grill her up a burger. She tells me that she has ordered pizza already from somewhere. She says she was going to call and invite me over there and that the pizza won't be there for 20 minutes. Although I'm washing clothes and also I despise her roommates I decide to waste gas that I can't afford and go over there to join her. WHen I get there she is all set up in the living room eating. Her roommate is home right there doing dishes. Well this sucks. First of all I didn't want to be in the living room area hanging out at all. Now I have to wait for her roommate to get out of the kitchen before I can get something to drink because, like I said, I no longer feel welcome in "their" house. I think see that Susan hasn't gotten me a plate. I hint to her that I don't have a plate. SO now I have to go in the kitchen where her roommate is and get a plate. I don't want ot get any dishes dirty seeing as how I'm an unwanted house guest anyways. I ask my gf where the paper plates are. She tell me there in the cabinet where she keeps her food on the top right. I open the door look top right. There's nothign there. Open the other cabinet, top right. Nothing there. So I ask her. WHere are they I don't see them??? On the top right where I said!!! she yells at me. Fuck, here I am trying to be low key and now she's yelling at me in front of her roommate who offered her money to break up with me... Great. I try to pacify the situation and say Calm down I don't see them. etc etc etc she continues to yell until I finally find them. I am deff. pissed now. I just got there she was rude enought not to even get me any utensils plates etc. after she invited me over there to a house I hate going to. SO I tell her not to get so "pscho" over little things like that a yell at me. I know she hates being called psycho. She deff. isn't psychotic, bi-polar probably, but psychotic no. So she tells me to apologize. I'm thinking I just drove over here to somewhere I didn't want to go. Eating in front of your roommated that don't like me. I get yelled at for something trivial like finding plates. Now I'm supposed to apologize. So i said no. She tells me to "get out". SO I told her I'd leave after I ate my slice of pizza. I ate my slice of pizza and said maybe since your in such a bad mood I should just go. She continues to put on a television show to make things even more aquard. All these things I want to tell her but were right on display in the living room. SO I just get up and leave and she doesn't say a damn word. So much for drinking being the source of my relationship problems. I'm beginning to wonder if one day there's gonna be a worse fight over something stupid like this. And she's gonna stop answering my phone calls like she is now just to fuck with me. Am I gonna be able to not drink. Right now I'm ok. I just don't know if the not drinking can take all this upsetness and things. Especially when i'm alone like I am now and she won't answer my phone calls to apologize or reason or anything. That's the most fucked up thing about this. Well I guess I'll find out how this goes. I don't know wtf I'm gonna do tongight now. If I go out with out Susan it's gonna be hard to find something to do with out drinking.

Day 5 of Sobriety Already and It's Fucking Friday!!! Awesome

2005-08-26T08:38:00.000-07:00

Man... This week flew by. Probably because I had to go to court and to a lame ass appointment, missing work on Monday. Been staying overtime to make up for the hours that I missed by not working Monday. Drinking hasn't really been a temptation. Yesterday when I was cleaning the kitchen I looked up and saw a bottle of Gin in the Cabinet... I can't say I didn't like pause for a second, but not a big deal. Man my roommate like confronts me this morning about throwing away about 30 eggs that were over a week expired when I cleaned the fridge. Quote "Don't touch food that isn't yours"
A. I cleaned out that dirty as fridge. Can I get a Thank You bitch???
B. Who buys that many fucking eggs at one time if they live by themseles. Assuming a pack of eggs has a month long shelf life ( I think that's an overstatemnt) If you buy two 18 packs of eggs you'll have to eat more than one egg a day for a month to finish them. Obviously he wasn't ready to make that kind of commitment to egg consumption, so why buy more than a dozen.
C. I bought a dozen fucking eggs from a LIQUOR STORE where they rip you off. I bought them for 2.50. Point being that eggs are fucking cheap. 5 dollars qould replace all those eggs.
D. Why the fuck do I always go on the defensive when people confront me about shit like it's my fault. I am such a fucking pussy. Automatically when someone confronts me about something I start making excuses and being a bitch. What he said to me fucking pissed me off. This kid doesn't even pay for his own fucking groceries, his parents do. And I clean all his fucking dishes, clean the fucking fridge take out the trash etc. and I do all this shit after actually coming home from a job, and next week school as well. he sits on his lazy ass all day and doesn't even wash his own fucking dishes. I am such a pussy. I'm just waiting for a moment to come up to I can speak my mind about that shit. AFtwerwards I'm taking a shower and I'm just like dude WTF was that. What the fuck am I apologizing for. Damn.

Anyways I'm over that.

Not doing anything tonight seeing as how i'm not drinking. Getting "Table For 2" Tai take out and watching a movie. Hope everyone else is gonna have a better weekend than me.

P.S. Man my spelling sucks. I actually read a blog where is spelled 2 like to. LOL

Ho Hum

2005-08-25T17:19:00.000-07:00

Another boring monotonous day. My boss comes back to work this monday so friday's my last day of totally f'ing around. Nothing exciting happened in particular lately. Gonna BBQ some burgers and cook up some fries and biscuits for dinner. No drinking today. The weekend is coming soon. That is where my real non drinking challenges will happen. Still no fighting between me and my gf since I quit drinking. I wonder if there's a relation??? Guess we'll find out. Till Then. ac sLATER!

3rd Day con no alcohol

2005-08-24T11:37:00.000-07:00

Things went great last night. I still got high twice last night and once so far today and it's only 12. I am offically broke till next wednsday. 0$ for one week. Can I quit smoking weed? Maybe having no money will stop me from smoking weed. I Ate left overs from Bakers purchased last friday (5 days old!)for lunch. I'm poor. Work is Ok. My boss is gone so I have been fucking around a little more than usual. Not playing any Free Cell though. Spending time filling out random Myspace surveys. Got officially warned about how I wear my pants today. Wearing my pants higher now. Got a cool 1 hour break for a "fitness and nutrition" lecture. I'm getting fat again. Why didn't I commit to my work out routine? Why am I so fat??? Damn delicious Baker's. I have been drinking less caffeine as well because I am poor. Maybe being poor will help me loose weight. Unlikely. I need to go to AA today. I don't think I'm gonna go to AA. Maybe I can forge my signatures that I need for my DUI. I do not have much weed left and I can not by more because I am poor. This being poor thing might be nice help. I don't have any desire to drink recently. Lets hope that keeps up. Now I just have a desire for cheeseburgers. I can't eat cheeseburgers because I am poor! hurray! Have to go back to work. Susan and me getting along a lot better since I royally fucked up saturday and stopped drinking. I think the drinking probably contributed to the fighting. I know that is what conclusion she would come to. Back to boring ass work.

Second Day Of Sobriety

2005-08-23T15:34:00.000-07:00

Well I did some fucked up shit this weekend. I think the night is best described via approx. timeline.

- 1:00am This is where I f'd up.
Billy: The part just got busted up and I have like 5 cars of people following me can we come over
Robert: Yea, sure... Bring beer
Oh man I'm a retard!

- 1:30am People begin to arrive with my friend Billy (who is in Robert J. Presley detention center at the moment) I quickly begin to realize I don't know ANY of these people, not one familiar face.

- 2:00am Backyard begins to swell and I finish off my 4th long island (FYI: I make mine with about 2 shots for each type of alcohol. Total about 8 shots per drink) My girlfriend appears to be having a good time, as is my roommate. Everyone's found someone to converse with. I am handeling the music requests and having a good belligerent time as well. Things are good.

- 3:00am I think this is right after I went to my room and passed out. I don't really remember falling asleep. My radio is turned up full volume and I fall into a deep deep slumber.

- 5:30am I wake up to the ever friendly police dragging my drunk, tired, confused ass out the back door and onto a chair. At this time I'm half in a dream state. I remember being exceptionally scared of going to jail, although I had done nothing to get arrested. I HATE THE FEELING OF HANDCUFFS! I know enought to shut the fuck up while the police are around, they are after all trained pricks on a power trip. So the police volunteer that they are here because of a reported stabbing. I assume one of the kids stabbed another one in some type of scuffle, that's not unheard of in Riverside. Soon the cops leave. Don't really know how long all this is going on for. I stand up. My weed, pipe, litter, and zippo are on the gound. I pick them up. I go into the living room and kick the 5 remaining people passed out on the couch the fuck out. I locked the doors, then I think I called my girlfriend. That's what she told me. I go to sleep.

- 12:00pm(next morning) Yawn... Gotta talk to my roommate and find out what the fuck happened last night. Not in his room. Yawn. Stretch. Hmmm... His car is here. How curious. I go into the room again. There's a pee sample cup in a plastic bag on his desk. ???. I see a bloody rag on the ground near some rubber gloves. OH SHIT! mind is racing. My roommate got stabbed, he got arrested... WTF happened?!? Of course no one answers their fucking phones. My gf does but she left after I passed out and has no clue, just as I. FUCK FUCK. The house is a fucking mess. I start cleaning up which I don't mind. In walks my roommate with a mean black eye. Long story short. He explains that he got attacked by some people who didn't want to leave his room. He got them off by stabbing one of them in the stomach. Then they called the police. He has broken a bone in his face. This is all MY fault. WTF was I thinking??????? Im such a retard! I should have known not to bring my ghetto ass friends aroung my own fucking house! and it's not even my house!!! FUck!! I hope I don't get kicked out.

Now you all see how I fucked up. This is why I am quiting drinking for at least a few months till I feel like I can really end my pattern of "binge" drinking and making fucked up decisions in the process. I have a lot of support and I'm starting AA probably tomorrow. I feel like a total ass now and I just hope one day my roommates, my gf, my roommates parents; can all forgive me for being such an attention whore, drunk, thoughtless ass hole.