adventures with homelessness part 3
i’m feeling… cool.
i’m listening to… rocky votolato - she was only in it for the rain, ted leo and the pharmacists - where have all the rude boys gone, ted leo and the pharmacists - the high life, the blood brothers - red-blooded american girls, bright eyes - touch, bright eyes - haligh, haligh, a lie, a lie, against me! - miami.
12:24 am — what a day!!!
woke up at 8:30am and went to meet aaron and sandy @ 10 at the san ramon marriott. went to denny’s. it was gross. sandy told us stories about how he broke a guy’s kneecap playing soccer. and it was the THIRD TIME HE HAD DONE IT. holy moses. he also told us about how he was eating dinner at his brother’s house, and his fiance made lasagna and it had way too much cheese and his dad kept making fun of her and she ended up crying AHAHA. terrible 
sandy that high-maintenance hoe! i write this knowing he will be reading it. so hi, sandy. he made me retake his photo 3 times cause it wasn’t good enough for his tastes, and then here is a sample convo:
sandy: don’t drop me off!
me: then come to berkeley!
sandy: i cannnn’t. let’s go to a lan center!
aaron: okay, look one up at the marriott.
sandy: no wait, i can’t. i shouldn’t.
aaron and i: okay. *go to drop off sandy
sandy: noooo! don’t drop me off!!!!
and so it goes. rofls. eventually we had to let him off and it was a heart-breaking, tear-dripping goodbye.
—
onwards to berkeley. aaron and i WERE planning to go to sf, but because berkeley was the closer (and less tasty) alternative, we went to berkeley instead. it started off slow, but ended up pretty well worth the interestingness.
where to begin. rofls. i guess i will begin with some stats. these are not at ALL accurate. they do not take into account at all the number of people who passed by. i did have tallies for IGNORE, but i think those are way too high and inaccurate to take into account, so i’m not even going to bother.
[NEGATIVE RESPONSES: ANGRY LOOKS OR WHATEVER]
05: white males
02: white females
02: hispanic males
01: hispanic females
01: asian males
01: asian females
[HALF RESPONSES: WAVES, SMILES, HEAD NODS]
22: white males
11: white females
06: black males
05: asian females
02: asian males
[FULL RESPONSES]
08: white males
02: black females
01: white females
01: black males
01: hispanic males
01: asian females
[OTHER NOTABLE RESPONSES]
- one guy who said, “that sure is a desperate cry for attention.” asshole.
- indian dad who walked by a few times but would not acknowledge me waving at him. he did, however, keep pointing at us to his son. wonder what he was saying.
[PROGRESSION OF OUR SIGNS]
- “come tell us a story or talk to us about stuff.” (this failed greatly)
- “talk to us.”
- “talk to us (for more than 3 words).”
- “talk to us (for more than 13 words).”
- “talk to us (for more than 137 words).”
- “talk to and enlighten us.”
—
“COME TELL US A STORY OR TALK TO US ABOUT STUFF”
BEAD LADY
no real responses. first person to give us even close to a positive response was a lady who was bringing out some signs. she ran a bead shop, and she claims she would have talked to us but she had to go back to manage her shop. maybe when her worker came, she said, but she didn’t ever come back (although at some point she passed by and asked if we had talked to anyone, and we said yep, cause jason was talking to us.)
THE HISPANIC DUDE WITH SUNGLASSES
this guy stopped by and his friend was next to him but didn’t talk to us. he was going somewhere. but he basically just asked us why we were doing this and he was surprised he was the first one to really actively engage in conversation with us. yup. he left, but wished us good luck. was friendly! we didn’t talk much of anything of substance, but there seemed to be too short of time for that.
THE BREATHING DUDE
this guy and his friend walked by and they seemed like they wanted to talk MAYBE but had nothing to say. college student age. the taller guy said, i’ll tell you something — “breath is the bridge between the mind and the body.” and kind of left it at that. he seemed a LITTLE antagonistic, like he couldn’t understand why we were doing what we were doing, but yeah.
“TALK TO US (FOR MORE THAN 3 WORDS)”
THE MR. JASON FROM ALABAMA
jason was probably the highlight of our conversations, actually. being that… he was the one who connected us on the most realistic level. it was kinda like talking to an old friend, as opposed to being interrogated or having just one layer removed from. jason… is from alabama. had just moved to san francisco because he had gotten a job at a game company in emeryville. he was a video game environment designer. working on a shooter that is to come out for xbox 360 and computer. he didn’t know much about what he was working on, asides from the fact that the game had squad-based play. what else. he was 24. had just graduated from school. double major in cs and art. he almost lived in seattle, but he got the offer from a place in cali before he got an offer from a place in seattle, so he felt bad not taking the offer in cali. so he took it, and there he was. he liked the pacific northwest, though. he was pretty liberal, especially for being in alabama. he said that he really just needed to get away and that his parents were still there but he wanted to eventually have his brother come out to live with him. he said that he did abstract type painting when he lived in alabama because no one was really doing that kind of thing. everyone was just doing same ol same ol crap. landscapes, and face portraits. and he said they were really good, but that’s all they knew and everything just kind of looked the same. he also said that people there were really nice and stuff, but they were all just kind of the same and cookie cutter — they wouldn’t know bands or art or anything until it became super popular, like they wouldn’t know the postal service until people heard it on tv commercials and then suddenly everyone liked it. but he kept saying and making sure we knew that they weren’t bad people, it just had no culture. and he said atlanta was ghetto and to never go there. and that there was music there, but it was mostly solo artists playing piano or guitar by themselves. he said the street he lived on had like, 20 churches, in that 3 mile section, and that that was scary. lol. it’s funny cause he kept saying, “not to offend you, but…” yeah. oh by the way, he had passed us by when he first saw our sign, but then came back and talked to us because he honestly felt bad for passing us up. that’s pretty fucking awesome if i do say so myself. i asked him about people’s opinions about bush there, and he said that they were obviously pro-bush, but he felt like a lot of people were confused… like they worked on military bases cause a lot of those jobs were military jobs, yet working for a military base doesn’t necessarily mean you’re pro-bush or pro-war… you don’t have to always agree. he also didn’t really know that the west coast wasn’t ALL liberal. (btw, he eventually sat on the ground with us, and thank god, because it was getting painful to look up to him and talk!) he had the notion that the berkeley area and seattle area were liberal, so all of california and all of washington were liberal. we told him that wasn’t true, especially when you get to more suburban areas, and that definitely surprised him, and he said it was scary that people’s opinions about things change with the amount of money they make. it’s true, and it’s kind of fucked he wanted to know what i thought about microsoft, and i said i’d never work there because of all the bureaucracy, and he said he’d heard about that. and then we discussed how bill gates donates a lot but he makes so much so he kind of HAS to because what are you going to do with all of that money? he also talked about some conferences like e3, but more geeky, so that there are yachts rented out by companies and all that jazz, but essentially everyone there just geeks the fuck out and talks about geeky software and game shit lol. amusing. yeah. that’s the gist of it, even though we talked to him for like, an hour. it was cool. a good way to start us off, that’s for sure, cause he was def one of the coolest people we talked to there. i pimped redefine to him, so let’s see if he e-mails! he was pretty cute. and i don’t even like facial hair.
after jason was leaving, aaron and i decided to switch spots. it seemed like a good time. we got some bubble tea (i got a red bean bubble tea which was made TERRIBLY!! it was more like green bean soup than red bean milkshake. the beans were still like, whole basically. fucking nasty, man. so depressing!)… and then headed more towards campus. went pee. the campus internet center was funny cause it was dominated by homeless. why not, i guess. there was some fashion show going on too. anyhow. we sat down on a space near the main entrance to the campus, under some tree. let the adventures re-begin.
THE GUITAR GUY WHO WAS SCOTTISH
this guy was half incomprehendable, but oh well. he said a lot of things about scottishness. we were sitting on the corner with no sun, talking to jason, and he said we should sit somewhere with more sun. i said i don’t like sun. i said i live in seattle. he said, “you like scottish sun then — it’s not hot.” i said, “exactly.” and then he talked about how he liked portland and had been kicked out of tons of bars in portland, and how he almost got in a fight with some scottish person in portland, but then he mentioned something about being from scotland, and the people couldn’t tell, so they were like, “holy shit, maybe he is scottish,” and for some reason left him alone (?!) hahaha oh yeah this guy totally said i was like, ugly, cause i was saying i don’t like sun and he was saying, some people purposely don’t get tans to make themselves ugly so that guys won’t like them or they won’t get attention or something. HAHA. amusing.
“TALK TO US (FOR MORE THAN 3 WORDS)”
THE PEOPLE WHO THOUGHT THEY WERE WITTY
aaron and i had to make a seperate category for people who thought they were witty. there were just too godamn many of them. they would say, “how are you doing?” and laugh to themselves, run away, and never care what you had to say. in this category there was one asian woman and one little white kid. they were both retarded.
THE YOUTH GROUP LADY
this lady was the leader of a youth group. her kids were these asian girls and boys. yep. she talked about how she thought it was interesting because her task for her kids was finding random acts of kindness and basically doing them. and she was thinking that on her way towards where we were (which was away from where her kids were) — that perhaps the key to being kind was just establishing interconnected relationships with one another. and the fact that we were sitting there kind of… went together wtih her thoughts on that. she had lived in palestine for a year and mentioned that people there seemed a lot happier because they just lived life in close proximity to one anther, interacted with each other a lot, and really knew each other. it felt like one big community. yup. so eventually, she was going to ‘test’ her girls to see if they’d talk to us. so, she watched us from a little far away and would just see if her girls would stop and talk to us as they were going back to meet her. they failed the test, as they said no more than just “hello”. haha it was funny, cause she was basically kind of yelling over to us, saying, “THEY FAILED THE TEST!!!!” it woulda been better had she literally jumped out of a tree, but yeah.
THE FOUR ASIAN GIRLS FROM YOUTH GROUP
four high school girls from youth group, who were being led by that lady. i don’t know her name. anyway, they came over to talk to us after she said they failed. only one seemed super engaged. two didn’t really talk at all. one to the right seemed like the gang leader of the two in the middle, rofls. she did all the talking and would barely address me. every time i would say something she would basically be like, “what?” and then go back to talking to aaron. it was quite interesting. didn’t really look at anyone else, as she was doing all the talking. one girl to the left who was shorter and a lot less um, high-maintenance looking… was a lot more friendly although she seemed kind of shy too. her random act of kindness (and, she was the ONLY one out of the 4 who revealed her random act of kindness) was talking to street vendors about how long they had been doing what they did and what not. que interesante. she seemed cool. said she was thinking about going to UW and stuff, so yeah. yup.
THE LADY HAILING FROM ATLANTA
black lady from atlanta who had a lot of kids with her. she was there for her sister, because her sister was in the aforementioned fashion show. she was friendly. just made very simple, polite conversation with us, but it was definitely nice.
“TALK TO US (FOR MORE THAN 13 WORDS)”
THE CONTACT JUGGLING DUDES
there were some dudes dressed in a top hat and a trench coat of fur kind of thing, and one just wearing other black clothes. the one without the top hat had a ball, and he was just kind of rolling it around on his hands. i asked him what it was for, and he said, “contact juggling.” i dunno. but the ball looked heavy even though it was super duper light. anyway, the guy in the top hat was commenting on how it was hot and i said he was wearing a lot of clothes, and he mentioned something about the shade we were sitting under. i think he woulda probably talked to us for a long time had it been just himself, cause he definitely looked willing to talk. his friend was one of those who was counting to see how many words he had said. yup. but yeah, i touched their ball to see if it was heavy and then the friend got kinda testy and was really abruptly just saying they had to go and they kind of sped off.
THE LANGUAGE GUY
he asked us what we were to talk to him about, and we said, anything, and he said, in what language? and we said, whatever… and he’s like, you won’t understand it! and then went away laughing really super loudly like HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!! some light-skinned black dude i think.
“TALK TO US (FOR MORE THAN 137 WORDS)”
THE COUPLE NAMED JAMIE AND JANE OF THE JUNGLE
jamie and jane. jane didn’t really talk much. jamie was just basically making small talk until he thought he got to 137 words. not much exciting there. polisci student. had some mediterranean food. boring.
THE HIP-HOP DUDE
didn’t think this guy would talk, at least not at length… particularly cause had headphones on, but he took them off and everything. young black guy — looked really quite young, but i think he was def older than he looked. was wearing headphones and a hat with interesting shiny sequiny shit on it and was really friendly. LOOKED really nice. you know, how some people just have that look. unfortunately, i forgot this guy’s name because he introduced himself towards the end of our convo. hopefully aaron remembers. this guy was one of my faves… him, jason, and linguistics guy. and maybe old jewish guy. anyway, he was going to his friend’s house to return a dvd called “the secret”… he had borrowed the movie from his friend’s mom and mailed it back, but she’d never received it, so he had to buy another copy to bring to her. i tried looking this movie up on imdb — it’s some documentary, he said — but i couldn’t find it. he was cool because he directed questions at both aaron and i, and from guys, that’s quite appreciated. he mentioned how he used to be big into music and how he used to go to davis to drink with his friends and did some crazy shit there. i think i like his attitude. i mentioned how not that many people are friendly, so thanks for talking to us, and he said, “it is what it is.” interesting. why interesting, i’m not so sure.
THE GUITAR HERO GUY
this guy was a bit awkward. wearing sunglasses, pretty tall. grew up in albany. he was a little bothered by the fact that his house was 6 miles away and that berkeley was cool standalone, but he wanted to go somewhere else to live for college. maybe for grad school. he was a cs major, i think. he said he was going to go to his friend’s house to play guitar. i asked him how long he’d been playing guitar, and then he said, “guitar hero. it’s a game like dance dance revolution,” and i’m like, “yeah, i know that guitar hero is.” sucka. but yeah, that was a little awkward, def, but it was nice that he stopped to talk. for sheez. didn’t really catch on right away why 137 words, but he got over it.
THE BELLIGERENT NICE GUY
this guy was quite the interesting. he was like, belligerent, but nice. first thing he asked was, “do you guys want money or something?” we said no. “you want to sell something?” we said no — do you see any money on the sign? then he tried to make some small talk but he seemed like, angry, but then not. he was double majoring in polisci and law or something. future lawyer i guess? but yeah, interesting to talk to, albeit a bit strange. this guy didn’t really catch on for the longest time why 137… seems like that number catches people off guard. people see a number and become instantly infatuated with it?
THE LINGUIST MAN
oh man this guy was interesting. one of my faves too. kind of nerdy looking guy from santa cruz. glasses. black shirt. super motherfucking spazzy. like crazy spazzy. like, i dunno what’s wrong with you spazzy, but i really kind of enjoy your excitement spazzy. he asked us why 137 words. we said, dunno, and explained the gradual progression — how when we wrote 3, people would say 4 words… how when we wrote 13, people would say 14, and so we picked a larger number. he said, “but how will you know when they reach 137? that number is so specific…” so i said, “then give us 1,000, and we’ll know for sure.” he seemed to like that answer. he told us he was at a conference in berkeley for linguistics. i said i wanted to do linguistics at some point but it was too hard. he said it can get there but it soon envelops you and you enjoy studying all the little quirks of language. interesting. so i asked him what he thought the most interesting thing, from a linguistics standpoint. he cited some german guy’s study where he was talking about the meaning of numbers, and how people use numbers like 100 and 50 and whatever to describe things usually, because that’s what we’re used to. we’re used to that from looking at scales or measures or whatever. and he said, a number like 137 implies specificity, and it makes people think there is some greater importance. so i asked him, had the number been 100 and not 137, would you have thought twice about talking to us? and he said, DEFINITELY. so fucking fascinating… the little changes that took place with our sign seemed to make large changes overall. but maybe what he said kind of explained why people were so fucking obsessed with a NUMBER on our sign. it was, like aaron said, as though the number were italicized and bolded, and nothing else on our sign was (which is only the case figuratively).
THE JEWISH ASSHOLE
this guy was really interesting. he was 65. he paid no attention to the 137 number. thank god. he basically said he really really liked our idea and appreciated that we were doing it, because he took classes at berkeley (degree from stanford) and found that people didn’t really talk to one another. evreyone was so closed off with phones and ipods that it was easy to ignore one another and not talk to each other at all. he asked me what i wanted to get out of doing this. i said, i liked to do it because i like seeing who talks and what they have to say… and it makes me think that people are not complete assholes if they come and stop and talk to you. and he said, “the unfortunate part about that is that i can stop and talk to you but i might be a complete asshole in other parts of my life,” and that’s pretty damn interesting. true, but i still don’t think complete assholes would not stop and talk to you. but i dunno, what do i know. he also hypothesized that younger people wuold be more willing to talk to people because life had not burdened them down and stuff. he was super interested — and he made pardons for saying this because he was from a small town in the midwest — that aaron’s this blonde haired kid and i’m asian, and as he would say, “we draw from vastly different genetic pools,” and yet we were together doing this and i guess, breaking those boundaries? and he thought that was really cool, i guess. i liked him. interesting.
“TALK TO US”
THE UNITARIAN MAN
i had a smiley face that kind of looked like a U with two dots in the middle on my sign. this guy didn’t have much to say except that i should change that smiley face around, because it kind of looks like a symbol for SOMETHING that wasn’t a smliey face… and that maybe people would think it was universalist or unitarian or something. heh. so i changed it. and before he left, he was like, “did i talk to you?” and we said, yeah, thanks.
“TALK TO AND ENLIGHTEN US”
THE HARE KRISHNA GUY
this guy came over and wanted us to chant some chants with him. he had some bells — they’re not bells, but i dunno what they’re called… they’re like castanets but make sounds more similar to bells (although not really). he said they were donated by some friends since his bag got stolen. i think it’s very very fucking interesting that he came by after we added “enlighten” to our sign. suddenly, i just saw him come out of the woodwork. it’s like, where did he come from? i dunno, but that’s awfully strange! anyway, he wanted us to chant with him. i still have the card. the chant is… “hare krishna hare krishna krishna krishna hare hare hare rama hare rama hare rama rama rama hare hare.” he said some verses in sanskrit that were pretty dope once he translated them. one was about how… basically, as the body passes from young to middle-age to old age… the transition is similar to how an enlightened person passes on after death to their soul… they don’t even notice or are surprised by the change. that is pretty godamn interesting of a thought. i know nothing about hare krishna, but i guess they believe in reincarnation, vegetarianism, and lots about gathering together in love to worship god. i dunno, that’s cool, i’m down with that. he was interesting — he held aaron’s gaze very intensely for a very long tme. not like, staring, but it was just a strong gaze. he went off on some tangents too. but it was interesting — he seemed like he was preaching to us, but not really. it was more like, just informing us about his religion. it was more like he had not found it all that long ago himself. but i’m not sure if that’s true or not. but it didn’t feel pushy — and just informative (a little TOO informative, i’d say, as he never truly asked us questions and more just ranted). so it was interesting, i guess. more about him to come.
THE SOLE HOMELESS GUY
so, this guy… he was kind of crazy. very long white hair. very deep forehead wrinkles (like, 4 rows of them), and very white beard and mustache. really kind of crazy. he started saying some negative things to mr. hare krishna, so mr. hare krishna asked if we could move. he said he wanted to respect this guy from far away but didn’t really want to talk to us in an environment of negativity. we didn’t really move. the homeless guy wanted to talk, so while he was talking to aaron about lord knows what, i talked to the hare krishna guy. he said he was taking lessons on counseling and learning how to listen better because he wasn’t much of a listener. he was taking classes from one of his friends who was a convert as well but also a very big advocate for homeless people, and his friend was helping work with the mayor and large people on homelessness and trying to find housing or living arrangements for those people. interesting. at some point mr. homeless got a bit too belligerent and was practically screaming at aaron. so i tried to butt in, and at this point…
THE BLACK LADY WHO COULD LAY THE SMACKDOWN ON MR. HOMELESS
truly this is a terrible title for her, but unfortunately, i didn’t get too much a chance to talk to her because the homeless guy was too busy wreaking havok. so she came over to ask us what we were doing, and aaron kind of answered her, so mr. homeless got mad and was screaming at him, saying aaron wouldn’t talk to him. and aaron said he was talking to him… but i guess halfway through aaron talking to him the guy just trailed off and never finished what he was saying. and then he got mad that aaron didn’t keep talking to him even though he was incapable of keeping conversation. he was saying things like, “you just want to throw me away?!” and “oh talk to her but don’t talk to me!” and stuff… it was kind of creepy. so i tried to intersect and he wouldn’t talk to me and was like, “i wasn’t talking to you! i was talking to him!” and he’d be like to aaron, “what, i can’t touch you?” and aaron’s like, “no,” and he’s like, “then why are you touching me?!” and aaron’s like, “i’m not!’ it was quite strange. ahahah so while this guy was ranting, lay the smack down lady was like, “where are the doctors? where are the medical professionals?” lol. she was funny. anyway, then i managed to get mr. homeless to talk to me briefly, and he’s like, “what do you want to talk about?” and i’m like, “anything. you tell me,” and he’d get all impatient and be like, “well, what do you want to talk about?” and i’d be like, “what’s your name,” and he’d say, “what’s yours?” and then i’d be like, ‘vivian,” and then he like, started using my name against me, rofls. saying, “what do you DO, vivian,” and i’d be like, “uhhhhhhhh… i’m from seattle. visiting here,” and he said, “how did you get here?” and i said, “uhhhh… plane,” and he was like, “UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH…” and i was like, “why are you making fun of me,” and he’s like, “do you practice that?” and i said, “yeah, i practice that in the mirror every day.” what a freak! he said to me, “you are a piece of shit,” and aaron said something to him about how he shouldn’t say that and then he got belligerent with aaron, and then the lay the smackdown lady was so funny man she was like, “hey, hey hold up excuse me, i have to ask my classmate a question here, we go to the same school.” and she’s like, “what grade are you in?” to aaron, and he said soph, and she said her too, and then he was like, “er, actually, i go to davis,” (which totally blew that lie but that other guy was too crazy to know the difference anyway), and she hated davis for some reason i didn’t catch. but man, funny. eventually, we decided we should go elsewhere, and ms. smackdown got our e-mail addresses cause she was interested in finding out our results (she will probably read this? rofls)… but yeah, she left after that, and homeless guy gave me a bag, and he told me to give it to some homeless person, and i said, “what’s this?” and he got mad and was like, “you ain’t ever been homeless, have you?” and screamed that for a good 80,000 years (more like 5 minutes) after we had left and gone back to bathroom toilet central. before we left he also re-started ranting about hoe we weren’t talking to him, and i said, purposely in a really whiny voice, “but you called me a piece of shit. that wasn’t nice.” and for a second he did kind of soften, or so it seemed, and he was like, “i didn’t say that.” and i said, “yeah, you didm” and he said, “well you ARE a piece of shit.” rofls.
back to mr. hare krishna. he talked to us a bit more before we left. basically saying that he respected people like that homeless guy, but like, he couldn’t help them anymore. all he could do was associate with people who shared similar beliefs, such as vegetarianism, and try to come together with a common belief. he’d been a vegetarian for 40 years, i guess. insert some other stuff. he mentioned some speaker who was coming to town and gave us a flyer, saying that speaker was super famous and had enlightened a lot of people during the 60s and 70s (the dude was dead now), and that last time he talked to someone, that someone knew the “enlightening dude”. i dunno. i’m super confusing myself. uh yeah. interesting. but he talked a bit about reincarnation again — oh yeah he also said yoga means to like, be in congregation with your god or something — not the meditation exercise crap it is now. but yeah. aaron said he “super had to go to the bathroom,” and that guy said, “you super better go then,” and he was elsewhere by the time he got out, talking to someone else, so we kind of sneaked away and went back to our car to pay 18 MOTHERFUCKING DOLLARS for parking 4 1/2 hours. WHAT THE HELLHOLE.
interesting note… there weren’t really many homeless people who talked to us. only that solitary insane one. VERY STRANGE. berkeley has so many homeless. where are they?
AARON’S VERSION (in a conversation with joe tran)
this hare krishna guy came and talked to usand rambled on about spiritual stuff and then this bum came and he was really crazy. he’d tell you something and then say he didn’t say it and then get super belligerent about how you weren’t talking to him. and then you’d talk to him and he’d be like, “don’t talk to me. you fucking asshole. what the fuck,” and stuff like that. he was sitting next to me for like 10 min while the hare krishna dude was there. and the hare krishna guy kept trying to get us to go and talk in a quiet place so he could convert us. and we’re like, “nahhhh, it’s cool, we like this bum guy who was totally annoying.” and i kept having to tell him to stop telling vee to shut up, yeah they kinda fought a little — not physically, but w/ words, cuz the guy would be like, “VIVIAN, YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE,” and i’d be like, “dude don’t say that,” and i’d have to like calm him down. the rest of the time it was pretty normal. that was just at the end. we sat on this corner on telegraph for a while and no one talked to us. we’d be like, “heyyy, hows it gion, where are you off to,” and try to talk topeople and shit but they’d just say hi or ignore us, and finally this one dude came back and felt bad for not talking to us, and he ended up sitting down and chatting for like 1 hour. his name was jason; he was from alabama, and he just moved out here for a job. just out of college and all. video game designer. but it was his like 2nd day here and he didn’t have a place to live or anything. he was just rooming w/ someone at the company and didn’t know anything about the area and all. he was a really interesting guy. he was the most interesting. yeh, it was tight… if you (joe) ever do it, make sure you have at least 3 people (2 preferrably girls), make 2 signs, go during afternoon (not morning), and make sure your signs ask like specific questions that will get people involved but they shouldn’t be questions on like an Issue. but irecommend it. esp if you’re with vee cuz shes coo. plus when people ignore you, you can just talk about it and how its funny. its tight.
kure’s response: lol maybe, but i dont think i’m the kind of person to just go out and talk to people, shrug 
aaron’s response: see, i’m not either, but it’s not hard. i really am not; i was totally scared going in. it helps to have someone who’s kinda outgoing, plus vivian had done it before but i mean i started talking a lot or i felt like i was anyway cuz it doesn’t really matter and you just say hi to everyone and laugh at them if they ignore you or smile awkwardly and some people actually have some interesting things to say… not a whole lot but a few. you should make fun of vee though cuz she likes red bean boba. it tasted horrible. my passion fruit icee was much better. i kinda wish she lived close so we could hang out more; shes pretty interesting. i’m always surprised about how equal opportunity she is, if you get what i mean. for the most part she’s very non-judgmental of people. i mean no one is completely non-judgmental but she’s very accepting of most stuff… just how she talks about stuff, she’s never like anti something and she’s not really negative about anything… i mean she might say oh that was messed up of some person or blah blah but she doesn’t take offense. i dunno. i mean 10:00:35 PM someone you meet online and hang out w/ for like 6 hours w/o being super awkward must be pretty cool. i was way nervous about that. sandy kept asking us to go to a lan center like after breakfast. well he had to go drive home at like 1 or something so he’d be like lets go do something and then change his mind and be like well…. i can’t tho. he always does that. whenever anyone would ask how we met i’d say something about mutual friend which is you. you would have done fine cuz i’m crazy shy. i don’t ever talk to anyone. this one old jewish dude with a moustache and hat talked to us about how no one talks to people anymore. he was saying how he took a bunch of lcasses at berkeley and everyone’s always on their phone or listening to their ipod and he never really talked to people taht much and talked about human interaction for about a million years but he seemed cool and nice
(jason’s response on my blog:)
Sounds like you guys had a blast for the most part of the day. I’m glad I stopped by to talk to you both. Made for a great 2nd day in California. 
-Jason