Blog – Page 24 – john paganetti

08-09 School Year

I’m living in Carriage House Apartments this year, which is interesting. Its an apartment, which is really cool. I like it even more than I thought I would. But this apartment has a twist: for the last 40 or so years, it has been home to the parties that make UConn famous. Last night, there must have been 500 or so people who came and went through the apartment, and even more outside. With that many people, it is really cool at some points, and really lame at others. It all ends up ok though.

So I have a lot on my plate this year, but thankfully I have a lot of time to do it. I’m taking 5 classes, but I only have class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And they don’t start until 11. I can afford to be laid back.

I’m hoping to get Landshark running smoothly, and a new business off the ground. I’m hoping to get the bus in capable hands to it can have a new life on veggie oil. I’m hoping to be able to do a lot of personal projects throughout the year, while I’m still in a place with an audience. And I should probably do some schoolwork in there too.

I don’t have a bed yet. And I have a lot of stuff that I don’t need, just lying on the floor. Hopefully I’ll be able to take care of both of those problems soon. Hooray blog!

Amusing Spam

Despite having half a dozen emails connected to my gmail account, I don’t get much spam. So I check my spam folder pretty regularly, to make sure nothing got incorrectly flagged. Last week, I started getting spam with really funny subject titles. Each lead to a website with a fake youtube video and tried to get the user to install a backdoor in their own system. But the spam was amusing.

UN Threatens Sanctions If Obama Not Elected In November

Obama Makes Appeal for Bitter White Midwesterners: “Let ’em Drive Drunk!”

msnbc.com – BREAKING NEWS: Grinch Turns Attention to Gas Tax Holiday

I saved these hoping I would get more, but since then it has been all garden variety spam.

Crap

Joe: in general, the old one was really unsuccessful because it was crap
John: makes sense
Joe: whereas the new one was crap with special effects, so it was successful
John: new one wasn’t crap
Joe: it was visually astounding crap
John: ok
Joe: special effects
John: but shouldn’t that take it out of the realm of crap?
Joe: no, that’s kind of the point i’m making
John: I’m pretty sure a golden turd could be sold as a paperweight or something
Joe: like i said, it made it successful
Joe: but a golden turd is still a turd
John: :-/
Joe: you can sell golden turds, sure
John: its also a paperweight
Joe: a regular turd could be a paperweight too, it’d just be messier
John: I’m going to confuse this metaphor until I win

Evil

I have found the most evil creation in all of existence. I’m down in PA at my aunt’s house for the week, helping her paint and get the house looking awesome, and I found something while cleaning out one of these rooms. She has sheets and sheets of bubble wrap, specially made to not pop. Instead of a single isolated bubble, all of the bubbles in a line are connected, to make a larger air pocket. So when you press, the air just compresses in another chamber, and nothing pops. Evil.

Grey Fox 2008

Grey Fox was pretty damn cool. It shouldn’t be surprising, but I wasn’t confident in the new place. When we first arrived, we drove through the (new) ghetto. Even though its a lot nicer than the old one, its not really a great first impression. The next thing I saw was flat. It turns out this isn’t as bad as I figured it would be, and really makes the whole place much more accessible. And the view from the amphitheater isn’t bad, although nowhere near the old place. It was the top of the amphitheater that sold me on the place. From there you can look down on the stage, and past that the camping. I was able to camp up there, and I’m certain it made the whole experience better.

Ron Thomason, in his infinite wisdom, put it well. He said, “I’ve talked to a lot of people who’ve mentioned that they miss the other site. And that’s just the way it oughta be, because think of all the good times we had there. And the way I kinda look at it is: I ain’t done havin them yet, and I hope you all ain’t either.” That pretty much set the tone for this year’s fest.

One thing that bugged me more this year than in previous years was my allergies. For some reason, living in a hay field for a week didn’t sit well with my allergies, and I was almost constantly congested. I quickly found out that if I was working on something, or walking around, my nose wasn’t clogged. So I would go for walks instead of sitting around, just so I could breathe comfortably. It was kind of like Crank, with snot.

It struck me as weird this year, because I realized that I probably won’t be there next year. Granted I won’t be too upset about missing it for the tour, but there are many great people there who I only see once a year. I think I’ll have to bring the bus to visit some of them.

I’ve got a bunch of pictures of the new site on Flickr. Someday I’ll probably take pictures of people or things that happen there, but it’ll probably be a while. I think I take pictures of the physical place because the environment there is so hard to explain and convey, in either photographs or text. Video could work, but anything short of being there just doesn’t do it justice.

I’ll try to write a couple stories about Grey Fox (both past and present). Its weird that I wrote so damn much about my one time at Bonnaroo, but I’ve barely written anything about a festival I’ve been going to for twenty-one years.

I’ve got a lot of dogs in the fire

I’ve been extremely busy this last week. Its probably a theme that’ll continue for the rest of the summer. Landshark work, bus work, a new scheme thing I’m working on – lots of work. And then, just the normal social things that go along with summer. I’ve actually had to just take a day or two and put them aside to do nothing. Because things don’t stop.

Tomorrow morning I’m taking off for a week to go to Grey Fox, at its new location. It looks flat and boring, but hopefully things will work out.

Revue

Did some theater hopping today. I’m getting familiar with where each theater is by its number.

Hancock was meh. If you saw I Am Legend and were disappointed when it failed to reach its potential, then you will be very disappointed with Hancock.

Next was Wall-e. Wall-e is loaded with social commentary, which I wasn’t expecting. Anyway, Wall-e is pretty much a smaller, cuter Johnny 5, and you do end up caring for the characters, even though they’re robots.

We popped in on Wanted while waiting for the next movie to start. I’d seen Wanted before in its entirety. It still sucks. This is sad because it makes Wanted the second movie to break the Morgan Freeman Rule. Oh well, we still got to hear Morgan Freeman say “motherfucker.”

Get Smart was ok. Most of its jokes were pretty spread out, but they were all pretty good.

I don’t expect anything else decent to come out until the Dark Knight.

Cleaning up

So I posted a thing on Craigslist about free bus seats, to see if I could get rid of them (the fact that they only have legs on one side make them hard to sell). One dude just came by to get a couple for his dorm room, and a couple people are popping by later to grab some more. Now is your chance, if you want one. Tell your friends, or anyone who’ll listen. Once this bus is empty, we can get working again.

I heart fireworks

We bought an assload of fireworks this year. No more than normal, actually, but we had some left from previous years that made the whole stash seem a bit bigger. Most of it we blew up in a big field near a friend’s house in Niantic. A handful were saved for “future occasions”, so we lit those off last night with Fran.

I like how Phantom’s website has videos in flash now. It didn’t help me in buying anything this year, but I think we’ll stop buying assortments next year and see what we can do.

Other Trips

I’m not sure why, but this summer I’ve seen more websites pop up about people’s trips. I don’t know if more people are traveling or if more people are blogging, but there are a lot of websites up about people in motion. Some folks are traveling in their cars/vans, living in them as they go. Some are traveling by bike, or on foot. Then there are the larger scale trips that have a decent sized number of people on them, and have been going for years (BioTour, Big Green Bus, etc).

I’ve added links to many of these sites on our links page, and I suggest you check them out.
They’re pretty interesting, and I’m certain you’ll find at least one that you’ll keep up with.

Maybe more of these blogs are popping up because there is a growing interest in this type of project. I know that nearly everyone I’ve talked to about the Juan Way Tour was immediately interested in the idea, having thought about doing something similar. I wonder what’s causing the interest.