12.25.2009
you should look at this - http://jtfanclub.com/holiday
unfortunately, i did not take the picture on that page. i found it on the internet, and used it without permission.
please do not sue me.
i wish i did take it. it is awesome regardless of whether you prefer santa claus, sinterklaas, saint nick, father christmas or hanukkah harry.
so yeah, have a lovely day.
i'll try to post more, but i've been rather busy for an almost unemployed guy lately. shit is crazy. maybe i'll tell you about it later.
warmly (i recently received a holiday greeting that was signed "warmly." i don't know why, but it creeps me out a bit.),
jim
p.s. i will be older tomorrow. wish me luck.
12.06.2009
11.22.2009
11.08.2009
My friend Andrew sent me a picture that someone took of him using an iPhone app that mimics the aesthetic of Polaroid integral film. I thought it looked cool, so I bought it, and I am happy I did. It is called ShakeItPhoto. It boosts the contrast, and it saturates and warms things up a little. Also, it uses a mask to darken the borders a bit giving it that low budget strobe look that the kids like.
Besides all that, it makes a Polaroid camera sound after you take the picture, and then you can watch the picture "develop" while shaking it. Shit is dope.
Bestest wishes,
Jim
11.07.2009
the building never showed up. After calling everyone under the sun
(or wet clouds in my case) someone finally came and let me in two
hours later. Keep in mind that today is a blustery rainy day, so I
set everything up, and then busted out the space heater to warm my cold
damp bones. I pointed it at my ass so it would get all toasty. Now I
have a warm butt. I went online on my phone to see if someone owns warmbutt.com
Yeah, someone owns it.
Met vriendelijke groeten,
Jim
10.13.2009
I'll keep you posted,
Jim
9.22.2009
yesterday, i took ole brownie out for the first time in quite awhile, and it was awesome. unfortunately, i stuck to the city limits of ro-town, but it was still good. riding in rotterdam is fine, but you have to stop CONSTANTLY. there are traffic lights and draw bridges and other things that force you to stop EVERYWHERE. if you could ride continuously for more than 20 feet, you would consider yourself lucky. seriously though, i'm only exaggerating a little.
best,
jim
9.08.2009
i'm glad we did that.
after dinner and a lengthy walk around groningen we went back the hotel for a sound sleep. in the morning there was a package with a festival badge and all kinds of useful festival information at my door. i really wish i had gotten this package when i checked in. i think it would have made things a lot easier for me, and i would not have felt so much like an alien. so… day two was a little better. i had my badge, i saw lots of pictures, i got a free catalogue of the show, and felt a little better about everything in the world. then i went home.
best,
jim
9.07.2009
best,
jim
9.04.2009
For those of you who are happy with your iPhone/iPod headphones, DO NOT BUY A BETTER PAIR or you will be sad when they break. Ignorance is bliss.
Sincerely,
Jim
8.31.2009
best,
jim
*imdb.com says that superman was release in december of 1978. i was was born in december 1975, so that puts me at around 4 years old at the time of this story.
8.09.2009
I'll let you know how it goes.
Best,
Jim
7.24.2009
I am unhappy and sad.
(sigh)
On a positive note, I made a fine batch of chocolate cookies with white chocolate chips yesterday. They are both tasty and nice to look at. On another positive note, Marleen had her contract renewed at work.
Yay. Everything is awesome.
Yours,
Meneer Turbert
7.20.2009
I'm going to update my resume right now. After that I may buy a lottery ticket.
Sincerely,
Jim Turbert
6.24.2009
The athletic fields down the street from my house are swarming with children and adult supervisors I can only assume are their teachers. I'm glad to see that field day is an international celebration.
Since my last post, I have re-uploaded many (if not all) of the pictures that I accidentally deleted off of flickr. I urge you to not use iPhoto's built in upload plugin. Currently, the free plugin that I used to use doesn't work with the most recent version of iPhoto, but it works well with the older versions if you haven't updated. It's called FFXporter, and it is awesome. Since it doesn't work on my iPhoto, I've been using a more full featured and effective pay plugin called FlickrExport. I fully endorse both products, but in the end you can't argue with free.
So yeah, I re-upped my pictures, but I haven't updated the links on old blog posts. I'll get to that eventually. I bet you didn't even notice they were gone.
Blah, Blah, Blah.
I still have no job. I get no Dutch love. I may have to go to MacDonald's. Seriously though, I will not be going to MacDonald's. I didn't work there when I was a youngster, and I have no desire to work there now. I'm sure it's a fine place to work, but if I must work in a grease hole, I'm not going to wear a silly uniform. One must draw the line somewhere. I was an extra in a movie last week. That's almost like a job, but it doesn't pay very well, and it only lasts 5 or 6 hours. It was fun, though, and I'd do it again. Unfortunately, most extra jobs are in Amsterdam. As a Rotterdammer, it costs €14 for a day return ticket to Amsterdam, and if you get paid less than a fistful of dollars it is not worth the trip. I did it because I needed to go to Hamsterdam anyway. I met some cool people, and I saw some sweet gear. Like I said before, I'd do it again. With any luck, I won't have to. I should be getting an avalanche of acceptance notices from all the places I applied to so far. Then I will have my pick of the riches that Holland has to offer. I could use some riches.
Sincerely,
Jim
6.09.2009
sincerely,
jim
6.07.2009
I seriously saw that posted on monster.nl. Shit is funny.
Sincerely,
Jim
6.06.2009
OK
I can't believe it is June. Time goes very quickly these days. Is that because I am old now, or has time somehow sped up? Seriously, I would like to know. Speaking of being old, Marleen ceases to be young next weekend. Now I can officially call her, "My Old Lady." You should send her a congratulatory e-mail for successfully completing her twenties. Her birthday is Saturday the 13th.
Today we went for a bike ride to a "special" grocery store to buy "special" muesli that you can't buy in the normal grocery store. Doesn't that sound like something old people do? Since the store is so far away, we bought 8 packages of the stuff. I think we're set for awhile. Maybe until we die.
Speaking of dying, I saw Terminator last night. It was far better than I expected. There are some nice surprises in the movie, but there are also some incredibly cheesy moments. For the most part the action is exciting, but the new movie can't compete with the suspenseful and scary chase chase scenes in the original Terminator movie. Also, I liked the old school analog effects in the original Terminator better. Especially when Arnold's skin is coming off his face in the old one. It looked way more real than when the skin starts coming off the face of the organic robots in the new movie. It's worth seeing on the big screen if you are a Terminator fan and it is around 600x better than the last Terminator sequel.
Before Terminator started, I saw the trailer for the John Dillinger movie with Johnny Depp and Christian Bale. It is directed by Michael Mann, and the trailer kind of got me fired up. It looks awesome, and I will be seeing it as soon as it graces the screen in my neighborhood.
We should talk more. Send me an e-mail. I swear, I'll write you back.
Love,
Jim
6.02.2009
best,
jim
5.24.2009
5.12.2009
5.06.2009
5.01.2009
4.24.2009
4.20.2009
i thought you would like to know about this.
best,
jim
4.19.2009
4.15.2009
i get no dutch love.
also, i have nothing interesting to say.
jim
4.07.2009
3.22.2009
as we were leaving the store i was bitching about usher's crappiness to marleen, and she pointed out that ushers is attractive and that he's a really good dancer. that is more than i can say for almost all of his female counterparts in the world of music directed at the top 40 youth of america. most of them can't sing, dance or make a sandwich, but they look good in underwear. at least he can dance as well as being a fine specimen of man.
that is all for now,
jim
p.s. usher, i may be mistaken, but i believe that if you are doing it in a club it is not called making love. it's fucking.
3.19.2009
i've been busy keeping it real. later today i'm going to get some spark plugs and pick up some film from het beeldgebouw. i may also go to the store to buy some cereal. i've been eating albert hein fruit and flakes lately. fruit and flakes is a copy of kellogg's fruit 'n fibre. after that i'll take some pictures.
i will be going to an art exhibition opening this evening. it is a painting exhibition of a pair of dutchlings who are known as villeroy and boch. they are acquaintances of mine whom i enjoy talking to whenever i see them. if you are in or near rotterdam, you should totally check out their show >>> http://www.cbk.rotterdam.nl/tentrotterdam/mooij-nl.htm
i will post more in the near future.
best wishes,
jim
p.s. if you live in my neighborhood, and you leave your cat outside all the time, please let him in occasionally. he keeps marleen awake when she should be sleeping, and he wants to hang out with you. also, you should want to hang out with him. he doesn't like being on the terrrace. seriously.
3.02.2009
I'll keep you posted.
Best,
Jim
2.24.2009
The other day I was thinking about the first time I saw "Back to the Future" (around 900 years ago). If you recall, the climax of the movie takes place in the parking lot at the "Enchantment Under the Sea" dance. Biff is molesting Leah Thompson in the back of his car, and George MacFly steps up, and changes the course of his family's history. Around the same time in the movie, Biff's henchmen, or cronies, or whatever they are are chasing Michael J. Fox. They catch MJ, and they lock him in the trunk of Marvin Berry's (cousin of Chuck) car. Marvin was the leader of the band that was playing the dance, and they happened to be taking a break behind the school while all of this was going on. I don't remember the dialog exactly, but upon seeing Biff's cronies messing with his car, Marvin (Marvin and the band happen to be black guys) calls one of the white cronies "peckerwood." I believe that peckerwood is a fantastic insult. In fact, I want to start calling people peckerwood regardless of what color they are, and regardless of whether they deserve it or not just because it makes me so happy to say it. Getting back on track, after being called peckerwood, the cronies feel threatened, and one of them says, "We don't want to mess with no reefer addicts." I didn't understand what he was saying the first couple times I saw the movie, mostly because I didn't know what reefer meant. I thought he said "referratic." I guess referratic would be a cross between refer and erratic, so the definition would be "an unpredictable reference to something???" All fictional words aside, that line confused me until I learned that reefer was one of many names for marijuana. Then I thought, "Ohhhhhh... The Band guys were smoking weed." It all came together, and the movie got funnier. I love that movie.
2.10.2009
2.08.2009
2.05.2009
1.14.2009
I've been back in the Netherlands for almost a week now, and I m back to my fast paced lifestyle.
I'd like to take a moment to curse out the assholes who have locked up my bicycles. While we were gone, the landlord changed the locks on the room where we keep our bicycles, and I still don't have a key to get in. This really drives me fucking nuts. Marleen has been calling them every day, and they say that they don't have a spare key, and that the only one who does is the locksmith. SO CALL THE GODDAMNED LOCKSMITH! It takes (maybe) 5 minutes to make a key. Mail us the key. Have me come pick it up. Anything - JUST GIVE ME A KEY! We rang bells at the complex that supposed also uses the storage area, but the people we talked to did not have a key. We spoke with people coming out of the building, and none of them had a key either. I just want to ride my own bicycle. I don't think it should be a major issue to get this resolved. I really hate people sometimes often.
Oh yeah, speaking of hating people, I've decided to give the French a rest. Now I hate the Swiss. They can go fuck themselves. Seriously though, after the longest, most turbulent flight I've ever been on, the dicks at the gate of my flight from Zurich to Amsterdam wouldn't hand check my film. I had already gone through security in Boston, but they still found it necessary to put my film through the x-ray machine. Dealing with their curtness and inflexibility became insanely irritating due to my lack of sleep and the lingering queasy feeling in my stomach after a night of bouncing through the air to Switzerland. I wanted to smash the smug little faces of the guards into the glass at the gate. I have never encountered more obnoxious people at an airport gate, and I've been through quite a few. Just for the record, all American airports (I've ever been to) hand check film, the Amsterdam airport hand checks film, and the Iceland airport hand checks film.
I'll write a more positive weblog soon. I just had to get that out.
Breathing easy,
jim