It's NOT a dry heat!

Because of various issues with the North Phoenix RV Park, I took my show on the road this morning... 40 miles north of town to a nice little place called Turf Soaring School where you can pay some ducats to be towed aloft in a glider and sail around silently for awhile then hopefully land safely and live to tell the story. I can see the airfield from my writing desk, in fact.

Oh course, now that the temps are reaching the 90's, it decided to get cloudy, which means of course... humid. So, now instead of walking around like Hannibal himself, I am sitting here wishing I was in Puerto Vallarta, where it HAS to be nicer weather.

AND in the process, the viewing for the Spring Equinox star party at Lake Pleasant (which is a total fucking misnomer) will be 'clouded out'. Which sucks cause Saturn is BRILLIANT out here, even though his rings are within 5% of edge-on. Still! There are moons to be seen and storms and shit.

Note to self: when you first turn on the overhead AC after 4 months, make sure there is nothing edible under the vents.

Next to me is a purple and pink trailer looking as if it has been here for awhile. I am guessing a woman lives there.



Yesterday, I was able to take in the first game of a Mariner's doubleheader with the Cubs. Of course it was a split squad game... which means I got to watch every player that will NOT appear on the starting roster of this 2009 season.

Here is how it went down.

I was standing out here where the guy is, described by the large red arrow.No, that is not me, but I look just as dorky, believe me.



Waiting to get this: (I apparently lost my ticket after the game, so i hadda sub the one from Tuesday)



Then, I heard a plop and looked behind me to see a ball hit foul out of the stadium veering away from a point not two feet distant from myself. I am standing directly behind home plate, mind you. I look around to see if any kids are going to chase it down, but there is nothing but my elders discussing their Madhoff investments. So, I take a stroll and pick it up after photographing it, seen below.



The great part about this whole game was this: the game was apparently sold out, so the parking guy said... well-uh, befoh ya pay for pahking, you go check about a ticket! So, I drove to the ticket window and asked. Oh, they have lawn seats. Well, fuck... just like a Dead show man... all that matters is getting in! So I bought the $6.00 ticket, got back in my rental van and headed back to parking. Well, after the 2nd inning (which is when I returned from ticketing), the parking leaves, so I just parked for free and found a good seat on the lawn and I was drinking!

Me: whitest guy in Air-eh-zone.





So, the game, yes...

This guy stood around a lot.



These people were there.



Okay... this thing...



This is a close up of the LED matrix for the big scoreboard. Because we are dealing with transmitted light, we are going to be using RGB values here, correct? Ergo, this matrix should contain modules of either three discrete diodes with perhaps 255 values for brightness OR one tri-color diode. But, as far as I know, three individual SUPER-BRIGHT LEDs will be seen at a greater distance and one tri-color. And there is some weird bleed you get at distance with tri-color. So, here we should be dealing with three large, bright LEDS of each of the primary colors. Which means each module of three discrete LEDs would represent one pixel (which as I moved away from the board, this was true). Nothing interesting here, yet. But then I looked at the modules and as you can see, the colors appear in different positions within their module. Red would always be in the right corner of the triangle, but blue and green would change position up and down, which to me makes no sense at all. Now, I did not notice that blue and green would change positions within the same module, but from module to module they would appear at random vertical positions. The only thing I could figure is... they got one batch of modules from one manufacturer and another batch elsewhere, where blue and green were juxtaposed. This makes no difference to the viewer, of course, because it still appears as one solid pixel color, given enough spatial relationship. Anyone got any ideas?

Then... these guys were on base and... nothing happened. We lost 9-2.



The flags of our nations.



The elusive Mariner's Bullpen Catcher's Gear.



That was the end of the game. We sucked. And some other fucker was wearing Junior Griffey's #24! WTF MAN!?

Something about Phoenix and hos. I went to see Watchmen (which I will get into later, but let me say that it was exactly what I was expecting and worth seeing again and again.) and saw this movie playing. There were a lot of little chunky white girls in line to see this! Seriously. I think it was sold out.



Then as I left the theatre, I saw this on one of these girls' truck.



Crazy shit, mangs!

So, I am gonna go take a bike ride through rattlesnake country. When I get back I will post part II of this relating to the cool star pics I took last night and some crazy explosion shit going on in PHX.

Big secret of the day : When I watch basketball games and the players step on the lines, it makes me cringe.

Until then... I am chilling like a villain.