Alex Vernon.com

Women are my greatest weakness. When I have one my creativity is stifled and I get lazy. When I don’t have one I think more but at the same time my thoughts are preoccupied with getting one. My roommate went with me to the Tin Hat the other night and made an astute observation. He said (paraphrasing) “You need to stop this, you’re just wasting time. Coming here and hoping something will materialise by chance. You need to work on your self then other things will come.” As much as I hate to admit it he’s right. I’m letting the preoccupation of getting a woman run everything I do. I could be enriching myself in numerous ways. The again why do I want to do that, to make myself more attractive to women? Maybe that’s part of it, although I would like to think it’s bigger than that. Maybe not though, maybe I’m just an animal at heart and sex until I’m bored then move on to the next one is all that matters to me.

Hey, hey, I don’t know what to do.

I’m tired of appreciating everybody else’s genius. I want to create something myself. I see pictures, paintings, drawings, read novels, poems, hear music but what do I have to contribute? I want to create something that enlightens others like so many have enlightened me. It makes me feel guilty thinking of all that I have taken and what little I have given back to the collective conscience. It makes me sick to think of the time I’ve wasted trying to be Cool or being lazy or just not caring. Sometimes I wish I could cry.

At the bottom of the world…….

Ok about the whole Seattle thing. I have neither the patience nor desire to spout out a long version of this. So here is the condensed Golden Book version for those of the Republican persuasion.

Actually I like Golden Books, used to at least. I should read some now and make sure they aren’t Nazi propaganda material.

Anyway back to the point. I’ll call this the Short and incomplete version of events because someone, whom shall remain nameless was to lazy to blog about them in a timely fashion as the forthnamed events occurred.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the introduction out of the way, on to the center of the Tootsie pop. Have you ever heard about the free tootsie pop story? In the past supposedly if you got a wrapper with an Indian shooting a star on it, you could turn it in for a free tootsie pop. I was never sure about this story, especially because almost every wrapper I got had the aforementioned Indian on it. Of course they could have printed more after they stopped the promotion. Or it could of just been an urban legend. I suppose I could Google it but I kind of like not knowing something in this time of immediate reference gratification. In some ways it’s great but then I also tend to spend large amounts of time looking up random useless crap just because I can.

Ok I’m done with the tangents now. On to the point of this post.

My time in Seattle started on October 2nd. I wanted to leave Atlanta for multiple reasons. I was tired of all the traffic, republicans, the rat race mentality, overbearing summers, friends moving away, the city council and mayor killing bars and restaurants but most of all it was wanderlust. I moved around a lot growing up and I won’t lie to you, it sucked. Always being the new kid (on the block) and having to fight to establish myself. Having to make new friends and acclimate to a new school. A byproduct of all this moving around is my boredom of a location after awhile.

Cue melting screen while gentle harp music plays……

I originally moved to Atlanta in late ‘96. Eddie a really good friend of mine had moved there from my previous city of Charlotte. I had visited him during the Olympics and was wowed by the plethora of nightlife and women. I was also told the ratio of women to men was 4:1, add to that the large gay population it made it even better. Of course that was probably bullshit but it convinced my horny nineteen year old mind. The kicker however was the job market. This was during the Tech Boom and Atlanta was hot (insert chessey Hotlanta joke here). Atlanta’s high tech want ads were as large as a small phonebook. Conversely Charlotte’s were composed of a just a couple of pages. Off I went to the phoenix and received two jobs offers my first couple of days there. I accepted the second one because Eddie worked there. Things were great for awhile, lots of parties and work was fun (gasp). But alas all good things….. Some of my good friends moved away, I fell (actually jumped headlong) into drug abuse and ended up quitting my job. I’ll save the specifics for another blog but eventually I was getting close to scraping the metaphorical bottom. Somehow I managed to crawl out of the pit of my own creation and started to put my life back on track. Once again I was a respectable member of society and hated every minute of it. With fewer good friends, disillusionment with life, my fellow man and even computers I knew it was time for a change. Previously I passed up on a possible move to San Diego and negotiations fell apart on a transfer to Ft. Lauderdale with another company. I probably could have went to Tampa as well. Finally I was at the point where I was tired of stagnating in my personal and professional life. After visiting Boston and Chicago as possible candidates, Seattle was decided upon. I was with my ex at the time (yes I’m single now, control yourself ladies) and she vetoed Austin which was also in the running for me. Looking at things now I might have been better off in Austin but I’m willing to give Seattle a chance. So Seattle it is and has been for the past couple of months.

End under-dramatic flashback sequence…..

This post has already run on much longer than I intended so Seattle details will have to wait. In the meantime you can read some of my Yelp reviews. Incidentally *self plug alert* I am now a member of the Elite squad. If you read this on Atlanta Bloggers I will be removed soon. Have no fear though, you can still read me via my Feedburner feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/AlexVernon or on AlexVernon.com of course.

Ok kiddies that’s it for this post, be cool and stop stealing your grandmother’s pills.

Looks like I’ve been kicked off the Metroblogging Atlanta Team. I received no notice, my account was just unceremoniously deleted. Not that I blame them, considering I was barley posting as of late. It would’ve been thoughtful to send an email though.

The problem (for me at least) is the lack of interesting Atlanta based material. Yeah you could post about concerts or events but that got boring real quick. Plus inevitably someone received the same email as you two minutes prior and already posted about it. Numerous times I would plan on posting about something for the upcoming weekend on a Thursday before but someone else would post about it a month in advance. This got much worse when the started offering money to the top posting cities. However LA seemed to always come out on top. Atlanta was usually in the top three before the money incentive though.

I guess a lot of it is my disenchantment with this city. I could care less what the Braves did last night or what Shirley Franklin said. Also there’s no point to post another traffic bitching post. All in all I found the blog very boring, however I do like some of the authors personal stuff and read their sites on Atlanta Bloggers. On a positive note it has allowed me to delete the feed from my Bloglines account. For a more entertaining Metro blog check out Metroblogging Seattle, or even better along the same vein Seattlest.

A couple of weeks ago I was heading to Landmark to watch Factotum presented by the Atlanta Film Festival. I got off on the 10th, 14th, 17th, 27th, 156th street exit and was at a dead stop almost immediately. I figured it was left over traffic but it was so bad I decided to take a right on 10th and work my way around it. Finally I made it to Charles Allen and was again met with a massive line of cars and people walking all over the place. I then realized something was not right and remembered Screen on the Green was happening.

Apparently it gets a lot of press, I’m assuming they advertise it on the radio or TV. I saw something about it when it was first announced for this year but didn’t see anything that particularly interested me so I forgot about it.

I finally was able to turn on to 10th and see the mass of people all over the park. I couldn’t believe it, the last time I went to Screen on the Green there were maybe 100 people tops (it was raining at the time so that probably didn’t help the turn out). It looked like thousands of people and they were still piling in (to see Ferris Bueller, go figure). At this point I knew I was fucked. It’s hard enough to find a parking space in the Landmark’s parking lot with nothing going on and everytime there’s an event in the park a bunch of dickwads park there. I decided to make a run through the lot just to check but my suspicions were confirmed. Needless to say I was pissed, at least they booted some of the fuckers in the front lot. I wanted to slash some tires but I didn’t want to accidentally get a paying patron who actually went to a business connected to the lot. Anyway enough ranting, I’m over it now. Although it would be fun to buy a bunch of boots to stick on people’s cars that park there tomorrow, with Turner’s phone number on them of course.

Someone who’s supposed to do a shoot on Saturday, leaves their camera at work on Friday and can’t get it on Saturday because he’s iced in. Plus I was unable to take pictures of our ice storm (northerners don’t laugh). Luckily Larry Johnson who lives in my neighborhood took some pics, check them out here: East Atlanta Under Ice

You know those bumper stickers that say “Stupid should hurt”, sometimes I wish that were true.

-Alex

Last night I saw Michael Glabicki from Rusted Root at Andrews Upstairs. Michael put on an excellent show. It was just him and one out of the five guitars on stage. He had an extremely full sound, I’m glad a braved the crappy weather to go see him. The only downside was the audience, 80-90% of them we’re talking throughout the whole show. Rude motherfuckers, if you want to do that go to the bar across the street. I talked to Michael after the show to let him know not all venues in Atlanta are like that. There are some places that people go to listen to music like Eddie’s Attic and The EARL to name a couple. That was the first time I’ve been to Andrews Upstairs and the sound was good but the crowd and the staff sucked. There was also a small film crew following a couple around. It looked like one of those date shows, thankfully they left after awhile. Anyway if you have a chance check Michael out, good stuff.

-Alex

Yesterday I was trying to call a friend of mine to wish her happy birthday. I knew her cell phone was shutoff awhile back but I figured I would try anyway. Turns out the number belongs to someone else now, so I hung up during the voicemail message.

Later on that night I received a call from that number. I answer: “Hello?”
Caller: “Someone called me from this number a little while ago.”
Av: “Yeah, that was a few hours ago. Someone I know used to have that phone number.”
Caller: Starts saying something.
Av: I Interrupt her and say “Thank you” then hangup.

Maybe I was a little rude but that is one of my pet peeves. If I wanted to talk to this person I would have left a fucking message! Obviously she didn’t know who I was, so why bother calling back? If I see an unknown number in my call history and there is no message I don’t worry about it. I figure it’s a wrong number and don’t feel the need to call it and grill the person on the other side.

How dare you call my phone! This number is for people I give it out to only. Unless you are telling me I won the lottery you are wasting my time. I’m also using my minutes up by placing this call, so expect a bill from me!

This has happened to me a few times before (callbacks, not getting chewed out). Maybe it’s just people’s curiosity I guess. Next time it happens to me I’m going to ask the person why they’re calling. Maybe that will shed some light on the subject.

This post really fizzled out towards the end…

-Alex 678.555.1234

Took me two hours to get home last night because of hurricane Ivan. The downtown connector was packed so I got off on North Ave, which turned out to be a mistake. Part of it was flooded and there was a car stuck in it with water up to its windows. Of course I didn’t have my camera. I almost went back to get a shot but after two hours in traffic and rain I was done for the night. I didn’t lose power but my Internet connection went down. So I watched Black Hawk Down, it was a pretty good movie. Although some of the accents were really bad. If you ever get a chance check out Ambush in Mogadishu by Frontline. It’s an excellent program.

Website Gallery update:
Apparently I’m not the only one having problems with Gallery and Go Daddy, hopefully the issue will be resolved soon

-Alex