Tales of a Ninja Monkey

Hookahs allowed on campus - News

2006-10-06T00:35:00.000-07:00

The week that nearly made my head explode

2005-11-16T19:06:00.000-08:00

So here we go, I am going to give you a play by play of all the ridiculous sh*t that happened to me in the past week that serioulsy has almost made my head explode. What, did you think the title was just something to entice you?

Tuesday 11/8: Fun With E.P.D (Eugene Police Department)

So I am driving my friend Octavio to the bus station on Tuesday night around 9:30pm. We are on chambers and 6th and I am planning on turning onto 7th to head downtown. Because of other car related ridiculousness my defroster has stopped working and it is like 38 degrees outside so the car is all cloudy and visibility is not the best. So I get into the left lane and wait for it to go green so I can turn onto 7th. The light goes green and I am waiting for the oncoming traffic to stop so I can go, as soon as I am about to turn I realize that I am a block ahead of myself and I am about to turn onto 6th, which is a one way headed towards me. I realize my mistake before I started to turn but not before I looked in my rear view mirror to see those glorious flashing lights. I proceed to pull into the Bank of America or US Bank, whichever one is on the corner. So the cop comes to my side and after asking me why he thinks I was pulled over immediately asks how much I have been drinking. To which I replied absolutely none. He then points his flashlight at Octavio and says; "well I smell it on his breath, how much has he had?" How he was so quick to think it was me, but then suddenly switch to Octavio is beyond me. Octavio had been drinking whiskey earlier and the cop asked if it was in the car. I pointed to his nalgene type water bottle which was empty and the cop confiscated it. So on and on it went until I started to feel really uncomfortable. Before he searched the entire car he asked if I had any guns or knives he should know about. And while patting me down asking if I had any sharp objects or needles he should know about. So long story short, I get cited for three different things: 1. Uninsured motorist 2. Expired out of state tabs 3. Open Container. Now let me make this perfectly clear, I will not play the race card because I know these things were my fault, I knew I was uninsured, I also knew the car was unregistered, and the open container is bullshit because it was a sealed water bottle and it was empty. That being said, I am well aware I have cornrows and a beard, and I have a gut wrenching feeling that I cannot shake that tells me that if this had been a car full of girls who were all drinking I still do not think he would have asked if their were any guns or knives. I understand the needle question because a friend of the family was actually stuck with a needle while patting someone down and know has hepatitis from it. If this was not an example of racial profiling I believe it was at least an example of sexual discrimination. Last but far from least, the car was impounded and I know have an "administration fee" of $110 to get it out of impound on top of the close to $500 of the rest of the ticket. My court date is on the 22nd and I plan on fighting all of it.

Wednesday 11/9: Fun with the Court System

So a couple of weeks ago Marcela was summoned for jury duty, not a big deal and she would normally jump at the opportunity but there is that small problem of her being in another country (Mexico) at the present time. So I needed to mail the letter to her mom in Corvallis so that she could take care of it. When I go to mail it on Wed. I cannot find it. I freak out. I look everywhere for it and after what seemed like an hour of frantic searching I found it and mailed it off, *whew, one disaster avoided. In my search I come across the letter that I received about my court date for my unemployment hearing which was set to be a teleconference. For those of you who want the skinny on that whole mess read this. Basically I applied for unemployment and was denied, then I had them reinvestigate and I was approved because they (previous employers) had a weak case. Then "they" appealed the decision and so a court date was set for both of us to plead our cases. Upon finding the letter, I noticed that the date I thought the hearing was on Monday the 14th, was actually set for the previous Monday (11/7) while I was in class. I freak out yet again. Keep in mind I just got over my freak-out of ten minutes ago. So I call the first number I see for the administrative hearing and they basically tell me there is nothing I can do, and that I just have to wait until I get the result(s) in the mail and if I do not agree with them I can re-open the case. Not what Johnnie wants to hear. So in the mail that same day I get the letter. The thing is like 6 pages long and goes over the whole hearing. I get to the last part, the "order" or verdict I assume, and it says in inflated judicial speech that I won. Yea, that is right, I won my case and I was not even there to defend myself. Bitches.

Wednesday and Thursday 11/9-11/10: Fun with losing Money

So not one, but two days in a row I lost in poker. This just does not happen. It might not seem like that big of a deal but considering poker is my source of income I take it pretty seriously. This again is an example of an unhappy Johnnie. I did however redeem my self on Friday by winning $25.00 in a little under 2 hours.

Saturday through Monday 11/10-11/14: Fun with a make shift steam room

I open my bedroom door on Sat. and I notice there is condensation on the window. Granted it has been cold outside and sometimes that happens when in the morning after a cold night. But it was like 6pm and I had not been in there. So I open the window to break the seal and ignore it. The next day the same condensation is on the window and the tempature of my room has significantly changed from Oregon coldness to Brazilian heat. I again did not really know what to think until on Monday when I hear a dripping coming from my closet. A little FYI, you should never hear a dripping coming form your closet. So I check and sure enough my hot water is dripping onto itself causing steam and a lovely little pool to form. I call Von Klein and our maintenance came out on Tuesday and fixed it. The good thing about being manager is that while he was here he fixed a bunch of other things.

Tuesday and Wednesday 11/15-11/16: Fun with College

So after talking to my advisor today and getting permission to do so, I am probably looking at a winter term where I am taking 19 credits. This is compared to the 10 I am taking this term. I am looking forward to all of my classes, it is just going to be crazy to find time to, you know, do those things like, eating, sleeping and on yea, being absolutely inundated and hopelessly lost in love with Marcela when she gets back. Side note: Only 24 more days!! ( but who is counting really?)

So there it is, my life for the past week. Now I begin preparing for my court date on the 22nd which means getting insurance, getting new plates and tags and fighting like hell to get that open container bullshit dropped. If any of you have any brilliant ideas about court let me know. Considering I have never even had a ticket before this whole thing is new to me.

Rest in Peace: Rosa Parks

2005-10-24T23:52:00.000-07:00

Rosa Parks

Feb 4th 1913- Oct 24th 2005

Today was a very sad day that marked the passing of one of the most influential women of color in the 20th century. Most everyone knows what Ms. Rosa Parks did on December 1, 1955 almost a 50 years ago. Her act of resistance led to the Montgomery bus boycott and with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s guidance, lasted 381 days and led the supreme court to end the segregation of busses and the ridiculous and unlawful "Jim Crow Laws" that were so prevalent in the south. I wish I could say that her struggle ended there. After this brave woman, who was 42 at the time stood up for her rights she; like so many other leaders in the civil rights movement recieceved numerous death threats that led her to move from her home in Alabama to Detroit. In the past few years she had suffered from progressive dementia but this was not the cause of her death. She died peacefully in her sleep with friends and family close by. I think everyone should take a moment and thank her for what she did and always remember that there is always someone being persecurted and all it can take is the simple action of one person to bring about change. Let us never forget her and never take for granted those liberties we now have because of her actions and actions of others.

"We are saddened by the passing of Rosa Parks. We rejoice in her legacy, which will never die. In many ways, history is marked as before, and after, Rosa Parks......She sat down in order that we all might stand up, and the walls of segregation came down."
- Rev. Jesse Jackson

To Ms. Rosa Parks: May your light and energy flow through all of us as we go about our lives. Thank you. Thank you for being a beacon of hope in this world and I know that you will watch over us. With all the love in my heart, Goodbye.

Always In Remembrance

Giant Squid found alive!

2005-09-30T02:12:00.000-07:00

So all of you that know me well know that I have been always been fascinated by the giant squid as well as all of the other "x-creatures" i.e: loch ness monster, sasquatch, yeti...etc. In particular I have been learning everything I could about giant squids since I was a little kid and how they are basically living dinosaurs. It is actually kind of crazy because not a day before this discovery, which was announced on Wednesday, I had some friends over and I was talking about this exact thing, and how there is so much that we cannot explain and that species that we have thought died out millions of years are still on the planet such as the coelacanth, which has been on the planet for almost 400 million years, predating the dinosaurs by millions of years. This fish was thought to have died out during the mass extinction 65 million years ago until they caught one of the Chinese coast in the 1980's. Anyway, the discovery of the giant squid was such a landmark because although we have known they have existed because they are found dead on the shores, this is the first time one has ever been seen alive...... ever. It is also fascinating to think that the snow leopard was thought to be a legend until the 1970's when a film crew documented them for the first time. The snow leopards were so perfectly adapted to their environment that they could see humans (or anything else that they wanted to hide from) from almost two miles away and duck in the snow and you could walk past one without even knowing it was there.

The giant squid that was photographed was relatively small measuring 8 meters (26 feet) which about the size of a school bus. The largest one on record measured 18.5 meters (59.5 feet) and weighed 1 ton. My only question was why they waited this long to make this discovery public. The photographs were taken almost a year ago yet the pictures were just released on Wednesday, so why would they wait to show one of the greatest marine scientific discoveries of our time.

Lastly, there are still hundreds of uncharted forests in California where there are numerous "bigfoot" sightings every year, so who knows what could be next. I guess this proves that truth really is stranger then fiction.

So I was fired on Monday

2005-09-22T20:05:00.000-07:00

How about that for title? Well now that I have your undivided attention I will try and explain the situation. Let me start a week ago from Monday which was the 12th... ( insert hazy dream sequence intro). So I get an email from my head boss who lives in Portland saying that she was giving the new guy (who has worked with us for like 2 months) my Tuesday shift. This made my new schedule Wed-Fri: 3:30pm-9pm and Sat: 10am-3pm. This gave me Sunday thru Tuesday off which for most people would be great except I like working, it keeps me busy and I feel productive. I have been working steadily since I was 15 so when I have too much time off I go stir crazy. This left me with only 22 hours as opposed to my normal 27.5. At the time I felt as though her (the boss') decision was justified because he had sold more then I had during the month of August. So as upset as I might have been I was willing to accept it because we are in sales and it is pretty cutthroat. ( insert fade into present) Ok so here we are on this Monday which was the 19th and I was bored sitting at home so I decided to go shopping. What can I say, I grew up with three sisters and my mom. The only testosterone in the house came from me and my dad so needless to say we were vastly outnumbered. Anyway back to Monday, so when I get home around 2 or 2:30 I notice I have a message on my voicemail. It was from the woman who does our hiring saying: "Hey John, this is ---, I just got off the phone with ------ (my boss) and your assignment with Comcast is done. Call me if you have any questions."

And I was like WTF! So I immediately called my Portland boss, which lucky for me it went to her voice mail because it probably would not have been the best conversation to have at that moment with me freaking out. I called Marcela but she was not home from classes yet, so I called my dad. It was one of those conversations that all of us have done, where we revert to 3rd graders and call our parents as soon as something bad happens. The conversation started out with me saying something like, "Dad I am freaking out, I think I just got fired, school starts on Monday, I have to get books, I have to get ready, I have to......" and so on. In case you do not know me very well, I have said before and I will say again that I will count myself incredibly blessed if I ever end up becoming half the man my father is. So he did his magical (logical) dad thing and calmed me down and gave me his advice. It does not help when he is telling me how proud he is of me no matter what happens and that they (my parents) will always be there for me. So after I calmed down I took his advice and wrote an email to all of the people above me with authority and expressed my confusion as to why this happened now. It was an understandingly long email which I will spare you, so I will paraphrase it by just stating some of my main points:

1. I had admitted to them in an email in August that I had realized my sales were down and that I was going to refocus during the month of September. I proved this by meeting if not beating 3 out of the 4 goals they set for me for September and the month is not even over yet. So why do this now? Why not fire me when the August sales first came in, not wait 3 weeks and allow myself the time to improve.

2. Why the company decided to keep the man who is/was my supervisor in Eugene after he cost the company as much as $200,000 or more because he had his car stolen where he had like 6 months of paperwork including people's social security numbers in the trunk of his car when it was stolen.

I did not get a reply until almost 24 hours later which was from the Portland boss solidifying and finalizing her decision. The worst part of her email was that she questioned my work ethic.
Wow. This is part of my final email that I sent them yesterday:

"It makes me wonder how ------ (boss) measures "work ethic". I personally would consider getting fired over the phone a display of not only poor work ethic, but terrible public relations. Not only was I let go over the phone, it was on my answering machine when I got home. This shocked me with its brazenness, and disregard for employee relations."

So pardon the cliche but: "You got Served!"
In case you were wondering why I waited to tell people, I wanted to get some answers before went on like a blabering idiot.

So as with many times in life we have to roll with the punches, and recognize that when one door closes another one opens. Namaste.

Template: 1 John: 0

2005-09-21T20:45:00.000-07:00

So as you might have noticed I changed my template a few nights ago. I had a revelation while switching templates, if you ever decide to change yours keep this in mind: when you see this warning from blogger "Your current template will be replaced and any customizations you've made will be lost. Do you wish to continue?" before doing anything SAVE YOUR WORK! I of course did not do this so when I clicked "continue" thinking that I could retrieve and or recover my old template if I did not like the new one, to which I found myself bitch-slapped by blogger. All I would have needed to do was save my setting as a Word document, hell I could have even used one of most useless programs for the PC had I used Notepad. Because seriously, who uses notepad? So after getting aggravated and talking to my computer screen I looked at this as a blessing in disguise. It would finally get me motivated to start tweeking some of the settings and adding more stuff to the sidebar so that I could make this the new and improved home for the ninja monkey. So for now check out my currently listening selction and currently reading for updates.

And now for something completely different

2005-09-06T11:49:00.000-07:00

So I just saw this on my friend Sara's Blog and I had to take the challenge.
.
Post your score in the comments if you so desire. And by that I mean, if you recieved a lower score then me I want to know about it, afterall one of the last questions was something like "why did you take this test" and my answer was that I needed to prove something to someone. But I am crazy like that, let me know what you think. I will say that I am little upset about the "low-ranking nerd" score, I believe I am much higher. And it bothered be that none of the questions were comic book related, if so my ranking would be much higher.

Kanye West, the man, the myth, the man who blatantly called out "W"

2005-09-03T10:29:00.000-07:00

For those of you who do not know who Kanye West is, well you have probably have been living under a rock the past two years. He has had his hand in almost every hip-hop hit to become hot since his first album College Dropout dropped on Febuary '04, with his second album Late Registration released on Aug.30. Although he may not be my favorite hip-hop artist by far I cannot denie that as a producer he is up there with the likes of Prince Paul and The Neptunes. His catchy hooks and his "groomed but still rough" look has helped add to his sucess. I am not writing this post as a hype for the man, but rather writing this because I have a new respect for him for calling out our wonderful president in a live NBC concert on friday to raise funds for Katrina.

Full article here

"George Bush doesn't care about black people" and said America is set up "to help the poor,the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible."

"I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family, it says they're looting. See a white family, it says they're looking for food."

Keeping in mind that this concert was live and simulcast to all of the NBC affiliates on the east coast and this comment went uncensored until it was taped and re-broadcast on the west coast. He is not alone in thinking that our "rescue" efforts are bullshit. My Aunt Stacy's family who has lived in New Orleans for generations are experiencing this first hand. Both her brother and her sister's houses have been completely destroyed, and her parents were one of the many people who refused to leave and we have not heard from them yet. When her brother and his family were forced to evacuate he only had 2 pairs of shorts and the shoes he was wearing. I really do not like playing the ethnicity card on this one but my family is black and when police and national guardsmen and women are given orders to shoot on sight I have to agree with Kanye in stating that there is going to be a lot of racial profiling and that hurts everyone. And yes, I know New Orleans is built on a delta and the delta has been sinking for over a hundred years, but that does not excuse the government irresponsibility and almost unwillingness to act thoughtfully.

EDIT: Tuesday Sep. 6th
I just talked to my dad and My Aunt Stacy's parents are alive. She talked to them on saturday night and they had stayed in their house for 4 days while the strorm was right pummeling their house. They finally came out into chest high water where a helicopter took them to a fairground for evacuees, they were later taken to Austin, Texas. Things like this remind us how precious life is and we should treasure everything we have. All you have to do is tell someone that you love them and remind them how much they mean to you, I think everyone should make time do this.

2005-07-21T18:41:00.000-07:00

John:1 HTML:0

So if you had not noticed I am finally getting more comfortable with html and I have added some links to the sidebar. I have yet to figure out how to put images of movies and cds (and my picture) but first blood is mine! Speaking of links, if your name or link is not on the sidebar and you think it should be I am willing to accept bribes and "favors". On that note I had forgotten to add sara, so I apologize. She even put a link on her site for me, so I will add her post haste :) .I also feel it is time for me to make my first plug: http://gessnersrock.com/ , this is the website my brother-in-law put up about my sister and their two kids. He is a graphic designer and I highly reccomend his site. Plus it has pictures of my nephew and new born neice of 2 months. The site is still a work in progress, seeing as how they have a 4 yr. old and a newborn. Oh yea, you can see a picture of my dad here: http://www.gonzaga.edu/archimedes/staff/contact.cfm?SID=022208161145Ba. I miss my family alot even though I was just back there like 3 weeks ago. I think of Spokompton as home and I think i always will, as much as it kinda sucks. Alright, well I am work and I suppose I should do something... like watch some t.v, or play reversi on the company phone.

Peace and Love Eternal

2005-07-20T22:04:00.000-07:00

Yee of little faith.

Sorry that I pulled the old ninja vanish trick on all of you, but I have been a busy little ninja. In the past weeks I have returned to school after a (cough,cough) ... brief period of time off. My class schedule is Mon-thur: 8am-9:20 Ethic Studies, Tue & Thur: 11am-1:20 Writing. Keeping in mind that I am still working tues-sat 3:30-9. So I have been trying not to go crazy and also spend time with Marcela as much as I can considering with her new class schedule we see each other during class (Ethnic studies) then she goes to class at 11am and I do not see her until I get off work. That sucks hairy donkey testicles. Anyway, so I am back and I should be posting more stuff soon since i only have 2 more days of my writing class. I heart 6 week classes.

Canada Kicks Ass!

Ok, so yes they have flappy heads and beady eyes. But more importantly they just passed a same sex marriage law that will proclaimed into law today ( http://www.equal-marriage.ca/) ! What is even more crazy is that it passed by a 47 -21 margin, which .. let me see here (pulls out metric calculator and aimlessly presses buttons) is incredible! We can barely get our courts to decide what they want for lunch with those kind of numbers. So yet another country is taking a proggresive step towards real equal rights for all people. Spain just recently passed their bill a couple of weeks ago. So I say this to you Canada; Along with your universal healthcare and now this leap forward, we will allow bryan adams and celine dion to release a new single in the states.

So for now, Ninja Vanish! (insert mysterious puff of smoke here)

2005-06-30T17:15:00.000-07:00

"Common disguises of ninja were, but not limited to, monks, yamabushi, waiter and waitress, traveling salesman, artist, ronin. Disguises were selected on the basis of their unobtrusiveness in a given environment."( http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Ninja) So here it is, in my quest to be unobtrusive and fit in with my generation I have started blogging so as and not be recognized for what I truly am. Except if you are reading this you already know the title of my blog therefore you know what I am... Dammit all too all! Anyway, this is my first time blogging so to everyone out there in cyberspace be gentle ;) . Alright well I should go for know, I leave tommorow for SpoKompton to visit my family. Feel free to leave a post and make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside knowing that I have some friends in this cold dark enviroment called the "internet".
Peace and Love Eternal-
John "Ninja Monkey" Bartlett