Fun with spam and Photoshop. Yes, in addition to all the wacky crap I get in other languages, now Matthew Lesko, the scary guy in the question mark suit who is not The Riddler from Batman is flooding my inbox.

Funny stuff: What NOT to do during "Return of the King." (via metafilter)

Here are a few pictures of the earthquake damage in Paso Robles. We saw some of it for ourselves yesterday.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the official Internet Movie Database listing of Washington Interns Gone Bad (2003)!!!

Well, we're still down here on the Central Coast, coming back to the Bay Area tomorrow. Our trip down was an adventure of its own. We wound up leaving a day later than planned because my brother in law's gift didn't get delivered on time and because we needed to get our breaks fixed before the long drive. We made pretty decent time, but the drive over route 46 connecting highway 1 and the 101 near Paso Robles was a bit scary. It was so foggy that you could barely see a foot in front, plus there was lots of quake damage to the road itself, and the genearl anxiety of driving on what we knew to be a very high mountainous pass that we couldn't really see. Christmas was fun. We ate, drank, opened presents and had a good old time, and after the first earthquake aftershock, we just sort of laughed at each subsequant one. I haven't felt any today, but we were awoken by one yesterday morning. Folks should start getting their Washington Interns Gone Bad DVDs by now, and I'm hoping to see the activity on the forums pick up as a result. I hope that 2004 will be the year of the bad intern.

One more funny Bush in 30 Seconds ad: he can't do that!

Those wacky Texans are at it again! In a state where you can wear a concealed gun to church, don't try to sell any vibrators! The Taliban would be so proud. (via metafilter)

A 6.5 magnitude quake hit about 10 miles from Anne's hometown. After a few frantic minutes, we got in touch with her parents who are doing just fine. There's some damage in the outlying areas which we'll be seeing firsthand tomorrow.

Last night San Francisco was dark. We were sitting in the Balboa theater, halfway through the first film of the School of Rock/Elf double feature, when the screen went dead and the emergency light turned on. The manager came in and told us that the whole block was out and that we would get a pass to come back. It was more than just the block, or the neighborhood. The whole city was down. After coming home and lighting the place up with the million candles that we have, we went up on our roof to see what we could see. The only lights were from cars and hospitals. So we drove around a bit. Part of our street was lit up, so we figured we'd see how far it went. We got into the Haight which was only partially lit, and considered grabbing some Pizza from the North Beach Pizza that was open. We went to get some gas first. Just as I finished pumping, the lights went out again. They didn't come back on at our house until 6 this morning. Much of the city is still out. I consider us to be very lucky to live in one of the first neighborhoods to be turned back on.

Al and Tipper Gore's youngest kid, Albert III, just got nabbed for a small quantity of pot. Which band is Tipper going to blame for this? Cypress Hill and Snoop better hire lawyers now.

Fedex came through after all! I just got 100 Washington Interns Gone Bad DVDs in the mail. Folks who have pre-ordered them as well as cast and crew will be getting them soon!

Bush in 30 Seconds, hiphop style.

I am so pissed off at Fed Ex right now I could scream. The batch of Washington Interns Gone Bad DVDs was supposed to arrive yesterday. It sat on a delivery truck all day long, but they couldn't be bothered to actually deliver it to me. I called them again today to see about having them dropped off or me picking them up today, but they're closed all weekend and I can't get them until Monday. We didn't go out last night because we were waiting for them. Plus, two cast members needed them in time to be Christmas presents and now I'll have to overnight them. Thanks a bunch, FedEx.

Paris Hilton has a higher rating than George Bush. If we have to have some vapid heir who has never been held accountable for anything running our country, I'd take Paris over Dubya any day. Nicole Ritchie could be her VP. We'd still be screwed, but it would be more fun to watch. I could picture it now... Karl Rove: "Girls, we need you to do something about North Korea." Paris: "Isn't that a state?" Nicole: "Oh, that's that country, right? Rove: "Yes, that country with nuclear weapons." Paris: "So like what are we supposed to do about them?" Nicole: "Karl, could you give us a minute? " Paris: "What's that guy's deal? He's always trying to get us to do stuff, like bomb some country, or pass some law or give some stupid speech." Nicole: "This job totally sucks. We haven't even met any cute boys. I figured if we were president we'd be able to date whoever we wanted. If I have to sleep with one more boring secret service agent, I'm going to scream." Paris: "Nicole, those Secret Service agents are hot! But they are kinda boring. 'sorry Ms. President, I can't do jello shots on duty.' They're such a buzzkill." Nicole: "I say we sneak out tonight. Let's grab some money from the treasury and take Air Force One to LA for the weekend. That goofy Karl guy can just run things. He does anyway." Paris: "That Karl guy is SO gross!" Nicole: "Oh, I know. And what about John Ashcroft?" Paris and Nicole: "Eeeeeewwwwwwww!"

More Bush in 30 Seconds ads: here are some of Anne's early favorite picks.

OK, I finally got a URL where you can preview my ad, but they don't seem to allow any sort of URL where you can vote directly for a particular ad. So, if you want to vote for my ad (and you KNOW you want to vote for my ad, you're going to have to watch a bunch of them until mine appears randomly. Not surprisingly, there are several using some variation of the egg and frying pan thing. Here are a few of the others that I've been enjoying the most, and I'm still only about 1/4 of the way through. I'll be posting more of my favorites today, and I've started a Bush in 30 Seconds topic on my forums for any of you to discuss.

To the polls! The Bush in 30 Seconds contest is underway. You need to register in order to vote. So far, I have not found a way to jump directly to my ad, but it looks like I have to go through and vote on ads until mine comes up. There is a button to "send this ad to a friend" on each page, so if anyone comes across mine, before I post it here, please email it to me at mail(at)jasonbuckley(dot)com. I've watched 7 ads so far. Some are really good, some are so-so, all so far have been very creative. They are rated on 4 different categories: Overall Impact, Originality, Memorable Content and Delivery, and Clear Message.

I just entered Washington Interns Gone Bad into another film festival. This one is the Artivist festival in LA. Its focus is on films and videos with an activist bend, so I think it's a good fit. I don't want to jinx anything by assuming it will be accepted, but I think the chances are better than they were at SXSW or some of the other bigger festivals I entered.

Interesting morning so far today. First I got an email from somebody saying that they want to put something that I wrote in a book and to write back for more details. I wonder what it might be that they want to use and for what sort of book. Then I was checking my referers and found a link from a German blog. After doing a quick google translation, it seems that the blogger was happy to find some US bloggers, particularly in the Bay Area, who are "against the dominating NeoCon Mainstream in the states." While I'm not sure if that was an error in translation, let me just tell any of the folks who may be hitting this blog from other countries that the neoconservatives ARE NOT the mainstream in the USA. They just happen to be in power temporarily. After Bush is gone, the neocons will return to the obscurity of their think tank basements. The funniest part of this whole translation is that Washington Interns Gone Bad translates from German to Washington Interns of Gone Bath. My comments translated both from google-translated German and in English are also on the humorous side.

So they want to put Saddam on trial. I'm not the only one looking forward to hearing his testimony. Salon has a detailed article about who else might get implicated as accessories. I'll give you a hint, some of their names rhyme with Fagan, Bumsfeld and Rainy.

Bush in 30 Seconds Update: Well, I was hoping to be urging all of my fine readers to go vote for my entry, but due to about 3 times the amount of entries that they expected, they won't be up for voting until Wednesday. Given this weekend's news, I'm glad I didn't have anything in my ad about Saddam running loose.

So they captured Saddam this weekend. Whoopty freakin' doo! Still no WMDs found. Our troops still dying every day. Halliburton still profiting from all of this. And the right wing spin machine thinks this is going to improve Bush's chance at "re" election?

Christmas time is officially here. That's right, there's a new version of Elf Bowling. Elf elf baby.

Who would have thought that in addition to being a right wing asshat on TV, Bill O'Reilly is also a fair and balanced writer of really bad sex scenes (scroll down a bit)?

Politically charged artwork critical of Bush called hate speech and award revoked by the sponsor. Here's the piece in question, and here's the artist's site.

There's a great article in this week's Bay Guardian about the emerging high tech underground here in the Bay Area. The whole scene around the guy doing the XBox mods is straight out of a William Gibson novel. I think I might have even run into the guy selling software on the streets when I first moved here. I was walking around Haight and every two seconds somebody would make an offer under their breath, usually "kind buds," "nugs," "hash," to the point where it just fades into the background sounds. The one that caught my ear was when I heard "music, and software to make music." I was in a hurry to get where I was going (I think it was right before my wedding and I was on a mission to find a vintage tie tack) but I'm kicking myself for not talking to him because he would definitely be a good person to know.

So as I'm sure most of you have heard by now, Al Gore has endorsed Howard Dean. Want to chat about it in the forums? I've set up a special poll about endorsements. In other news, Joe Lieberman looks like an even bigger ass than usual upon hearing the news, and remains irrelevant.

The Washington Interns Gone Bad master DVD has been shipped off to be duplicated! It should get there on Thursday and be back here sometime next week. Thanks to everyone who pre-ordered one to help get this run going. You can still place an order and get it in time for Christmas right now. This is what the discs are going to look like. You know you want one!

Oh man, rough day today! First phonecall of the day was the newspaper telling me that I didn't need to come in today because they were going to be trying out other people who applied for the job. I'm guessing that I can kiss that sweet gig goodbye. Second call is from the theater that I did a program for with a few last minute changes a day after it went to the printer. I had to beg the printer to let me make the changes, but it all came together. Nothing like a heaping helping of STRESS!

Dammit! Blogger ate my post TWICE now. I wrote about the end of Jennicam, but I don't care enough to write about it a third time. You'll just have to take my word for it that it was a great post, deserving of a bloggy award. I could have been a contender! Anyway, here's what folks at Metafilter and Fark had to say about it. So long, Jenni. Enjoy the privacy.

John Kerry drops an F-Bomb in a Rolling stone interview about Bush (his exact quote: "Did I expect George Bush to fuck [the Iraq war] up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did.") and the White House gets their panties in a knot over it.

OK, the new message board is up, and it's frightfully empty. I've added links to it where the comment links used to be. Please use it as you would use comments. I plan on having some fun with it, including a whole batch of crazy avatars, plus an extended invite to the entire cast and crew of Washington Interns Gone Bad to come chat with our fans. Folks may come to this blog searching for "Metallica Chains of Pain Lyrics," "breast implants gone bad," and "mange moi," but hopefully they'll stay for the message boards.

OK, commenting is gone. I still have all of the old comments somewhere in my cgi-bin and I might try to get them posted with the archives at some point. I should have the BBS ready shortly.

OK, my site is now up and running on a brand new server. I'm getting lots more features for less than half of what I was paying for my old hosting. There are going to be some things that aren't going to work and some dead links, but I'll be fixing and changing them soon. I don't think commenting will be working just yet, and I may ditch it all together since A) I don't typically get that many comments and B) one of the sweet new features is PHP Bulletin Board.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have officially entered the Bush in 30 Seconds contest tonight. While you can't view or vote on the entries until the 15th, here's a sneek peek at mine. I'd like to thank the Democratic Underground message board community for both the idea for this ad, and specifically Jeff for coming through at the zero hour to star in this ad. I'll be posting vigorously when it comes time to vote on these.

Lessons learned from my first day of my first design job for a weekly paper: Quark has lots of keyboard shortcuts that I didn't know about Photos for newsprint need to be a bit lighter Ads for businesses should never go next to ads for porn I also got to see some new and unique ways that a computer can crash. Overall, it was a good first day. I got to create one ad, changed a bunch of existing ads, scanned and color corrected some photos, and placed them. Tomorrow is deadline day and I'm there until it gets put to bed. I haven't worked on a newspaper since college and I'm remembering how fun it is.

Don't expect too many updates over the course of the next week. I have gone and seriously overbooked myself. I took a second part time job which I start today and tomorrow doing layout work for an alternative weekly paper (there's no shortage of those here in San Francisco). Plus I have a theatrical program to lay out in time to go to press on Monday, a problem-prone printer to deal with in LA, and a website to design for my other part time job. Somewhere in there I also need to order the Washington Interns Gone Bad duplication run, and get my website and email up and running properly on its new host. YIKES! Also, this weekend is the opening of the Holiday Art Mart where Anne is going to be selling her jewelry, and her folks are going to be in town. I don't know how I'll do it all, but I will. Edited to add: Oh yeah, and on top of all of this, I'm shooting my Bush in 30 Seconds ad in about 5 minutes and have to get it edited, compressed and entered into the contest before Friday. Yikes X2!