Flowergirl

Diya, originally uploaded by Joe_13.

Here is my good pal David's daughter Diya.
She'll be one of our flowergirls for my wedding.

www.amyandjoegetmarried.com

Magnum

One picture in particular inspired my to pursue photography.
James Nachtwey's image of a Rwandan genocide survivor invokes the truest sense of terror. It insists that questions be asked. It makes demands.
It proves that photography has potential to be a positive force. To be significant.
Or at least to preserve a story that should not be forgotten.




Magnum Photo Agency (of which Nachtwey was once a member) is featuring riveting photo essays entitiled WAR. It's brutal, insightful and fascinating. I especially enjoy hearing the photographers tell about their experiences.
Check out the rest of their website too. It's time worth spending on the web. Edu-taining as hell. And the pictures are awe inspiring.

History of cancer

My fiance has cancer in her family. Her mother's side was pretty much decimated by colon cancer. Her half sister is a suvivor. Another relative in Australia was also a cancer survivor. Recently Amy received a letter, the results of that aunt's genetic test, determining which gene mutation caused the cancer.
Today, Amy got the results of her own genetic test to see if that gene was mutated in her. Her chances of having the gene mutation were 50/50. If she has the mutation, she'd have 80-90% of getting colon cancer. Survivable, but a future hysterecomy would be inevitable.
The results:
No gene mutation was found!

Celebrate life! My angel's gonna live!

Life is good

Much is going on.
Living in the new house is killer. Livermore is treating me right. There is at least one of most types of cuisine for me to eat. Which is just enough to keep me sane.
The weather, often unbearably hot in the summer, is kept in check by our powerful Air conditioning. Which I love.
The commute. Not so bad. I reduced my hours in the office, so I don't have to make the rush hour commute but a couple times a week. Any more than that and I couldn't handle it.
I finally sold the old Pathfinder. And not a moment too soon. The extra dough from the sale allowed me to make some major camera gear purchases. So I have almost everything I need (equipment-wise) to shoot any type of event. Now I just need to purchase some ballz to start marketing myself.
On the poker tip, not so good. No major losses, but since the beginning of the year, I've been making a slow downward slide. I think I'm bored of the game. I've been playing very loose, overplaying shit hands like J10, and Ajunk suited. I have yet to go broke, but at this rate that may happen.
The wedding planning is going well. Most of the big decisions have been made. We have our venue, the DJ, the photographer, Invites are in process, flowers have been booked, and Amy has her dress picked out. A couple small details and we are a go.
But, first things are first... The bachelor party is in effect y'all. Next week I leave for Acapulco. Next week it will be know as Joecapulco. Ten dudes and a villa. ... and tons of booze. Stoked beyond words.

Tattoos...
I'm already planning my next one. Randomly I emailed the sickeningly talented tattooist/artist Jeff Gogue. His website says he isn't taking new clients, and suggests he is booked indefinitely. So, to plant the seed, I sent a probing email to him which included a link to an image of a "Foo Dog" also known as Chinese Imperial Lion Guardians. A couple days later he replied saying he is interested in doing the piece and that we should get in contact when my timeline gets closer. Something else to look forward to.

I'm reluctant to admit, my life is awesome. Too good.

Airborne is BS!

Turns out it was all bullshit afterall.
Airborne settles
Placebo effect is a muthaf*cker.

Marrow

I was approached by phone the other day by a national organization who matches anemia patients with possible bone marrow donors. I might match a two-year old kid with Aplastic Anemia. Apparently I submitted my blood sample back in '98, and now my numbers come up.
Why couldn't it be the Lotto instead? Just kidding... Sort of.
Anyway, I answered a bunch of questions about my medical history which I assume will conclude me to be clean. Now it's my turn. I gotta do some research about donating marrow. So far it seems, the risks are fairly low. Obviously it'd be a commitment on my part. Time, pain, risk of fluke death?.
The upside is I might save a kid. Upside for me personally is negative.

Here lies the moral dilemma.
Is it wrong for me to be selfish about this? Asking "What do I get out of this?" is clearly a selfish question. What if to save a stranger's life? Is it worth me losing a couple day's wages, risk at the very least some discomfort?

I have to admit. It was easy to WANT to help a stranger. But when I saw the picture of them drilling a hole into a donor's pelvic bone to extract bone marrow, it suddenly didn't seem so easy to say yes.

I'll move forward to see if I am in fact a match.

But at the risk of sounding cowardly.
I reserve the right to back out at any time.

Chrysanthemums

Chrysanthemum, originally uploaded by Joe_13.

Here's a pretty flower.
A little change from the death skulls theme.

Poppy on Main Street

Poppy on Main Street, originally uploaded by Joe_13.

Since I haven't posted anything good in a while. I'll continue the tradition with this pretty flower.

My drawing on skin!

My drawing on skin!, originally uploaded by Joe_13.

Someone got my drawing permanently on their skin!
How cool is that?!

Halloween

Halloween with background, originally uploaded by Joe_13.

A Halloween illustration for the Town Crier

Ink

A couple weeks ago I finally went under the tattoo machine. Holly Ellis of Idle Hand Tattoo inflicted 4.5 hours of art on my ribs. The image, a portrait of my mom and Ellis' version of bamboo painting, is rendered in black and grey and begins just below my hip bone and it extends to just under the armpit.
The experience was as expected. It had its moments. For the most part it feels like hundreds of bee stings, each drawn out a length at a time. At it's most agonizing, it resembled how it might feel to have someone drill into your ribcage with a Mikita. At it's easiest, it felt like a pleasant scratch drawn lightly across the back.
Overall, I'd say I wouldn't choose the ribs for my next piece, but now thinking back to the experience, I can't say I remember the pain all that much.
I can tell you that once the pain is over, comes something I consider to be worse than the acute sting of the machine. The itch. So far, the relentless itch of healing flesh has been consistent over the last two weeks. Scratching is bad. Slapping only somewhat works. Lubricating with unscented lotion works for about a minute. Only now is it starting to mellow. But my fear is that it will always itch a bit. I hope not, but after the past two weeks, it seems like it'll never stop.
The tattoo looks great. It fits my body perfectly. My fiance, at first apprehensive about the concept, took one look and declared her love for it. My brother is stoked with its likeness to mom.
Me, I love having it. It looks cool. It is meaningful. It's well done.

A few more hours of pain, and it'll be finished. I'll post pics when it's done.

Ghost Wars

Ghost Wars, originally uploaded by Joe_13.

A painstakingly researched book documenting the CIA and their involvement in Afghanistan from Vietnam to 9-11.

It took me a solid year to read this book, mostly because I only read it a couple pages at a time, in my car, during my work breaks.
Despite how long it took to finish, I found it to be a page-turner, filled with interesting characters, intriguing plot twists, frustrating CIA/Gov't blunders, and tragic consequences.
A compelling, intelligent, detailed Pulitzer winning non-fictional book.

Rear ended on 84

Rear ended on 84, originally uploaded by Joe_13.

Driving to work today, my car got ass-reamed. Not in a sexual way.
... Or was it?
So, as I was cruising up the two-lane highway 84, the truck in front of me stopped to turn left, so I stopped too. But the car behind me didn't.

Boom.

Her pops showed up to giver her a supportive hug while CHP inspects the damage.
Bungee cords now hold together my car's ass.

Sam and Jen's wedding

SamD's wedding was a few weeks ago and was a blast. I'd say it was easily at the top 2 or 3 weddings ever. They had it at the Plumpjack resort at Squaw Valley with entertainment provided by the Police cover bad, Stung. After a nice, heartwarming and brief ceremony, we headed off to the Plumpjack for beer, wine and food. The food was standard wedding fare beef with a mixed veggie plate. Nothing to write home about, but not bad either. The speeches were excellent, with the Best Man Coby Bell giving a hysterical toast for Sam. The couple opted to skip cake cutting, flower tossing, garter-throwing, and honestly, those ceremonial events were not missed at all by any of the guests.
After dinner, I noticed a few of Sam's older family members outside enjoying a cigar. So naturally, I joined them with a couple of my own stoges.
Turns out these guys were Sam's uncles. The same guys who taught SamD shotgunning and fishing. The guys who taught Sam to be a man. Uncle Bob and Doug instantly fascinated all of us. We monopolized his time squeezing Sam stories from him for hours. I dashed in and out between the dance floor (which was kickin') and the Uncle Doug lessons-in-life and Sam D stories all night.
Finally, Amy and I got down to real business on the dance floor. Stung played most of the Police classics and infused them with favorites by Bob Marley and Sublime. We got the dance floor moving. When their set ended, Amy got the floor chanting "ENCORE, ENCORE!" and to our surprise, they fired up and played two more songs until security literally pulled the plug. At one point the lead singer said, "This is better than Oakland Colosseum!"
It was for us.

Afterward, we headed back to our rental cabin. The Buchman house.
We had a few more drinks and decided to take in the Perseid meteor shower on the front lawn. Absolutely incredible. We saw at least 5-10 shooting stars.
Despite the house's broken water heater, we'd go back, especially in winter, when it's very very close proximity to the ski lifts would be very convenient.

Cards

Poker.

My online game has been fluctuating as of late. I haven't played that much actually, and while I've been doing pretty well in cash games, my sit-n-go game has been below average. My overall balance is holding tight, and I finally brought it back over the 1G mark again. That may change when I get home tonight, but lets hope it is in the upward direction.
The live game is neither here nor there. I'm playing decent, but I can't seem to do very well against Chizz, whose been killing our home game lately. He's is on a a heater for sure... But the question is he really that good? or is he a very lucky player? I think the jury's still out.
I will tell you that I have a hard time playing him. All I know is the flop always hits him harder than me. If I hit an ace, he outkicks me. If I draw pocket tens, he's got the aces. A straight? Fuckit, he's got the flush. That, and he's untiltable. Because he has no emotions whatsoever. No emotions? no tilt. Also, no facial expressions. No expressions = no tells.

I'm going to post player profiles in the near future, revealing most of my insights of the players who we play often with: their strengths, weaknesses, and my own, as honestly as I can. That'll be interesting... for me.

Moving and the tattoo

We finally got moved into the new place.
What a fucking nightmare. Moving has got to be one of the most unpleasant things to do. And worse, to put others through. So to anyone who helped. We truly appreciate it.
Nothing quite compares to the agony of moving. It's essentially hard-core manual-ass labor. It gets dusty, dirty, sweaty, and generally funkdified. You make monotonously excruciating trips to the house, to the truck, back to the house, back to the truck, and on and on and on. Absolutely hellish. It reminds me of what hell must be like.
So then comes cleanup. And our house was dirty as shit. Embarassingly dirty. Let me explain. Our house is surrounded by dirt. So everything gets covered in dust. And we have three animals. We don't brush them that often. So the shedding is ... abundant. Let's just say, we could've made another dog with the hair bunched in the corner of the room.
But those days are over. We resolve to keep the new pad clean.
We're going to get a new vacuum cleaner. New mops, new Swifters.

On another note.
I finally made the appointment and put a deposit on my tattoo.
Holly is doing it. It's been almost a year since I've been planning this, and now it's on the calendar officially.
Finding and scheduling a tattoo session is not an easy task I've discovered. Sure I could've probably scheduled a tattoo with some random person in a street shop, but I really want my first tattoo to be top-notch and significant. There are many excellent artists in the bay area, especially SF and San Jose. And I mean world-class artists. Making a decision on who's going to mark me forever is difficult. And then there's getting the appointment. But Ithe truth is that most of the artists I tried contacting didn't answer emails, phone calls or left messages. I understand why. They must be getting requests from everywhere and have to be discriminating. Sounds like a great gig.
But when I finally talked to Holly, she seemed into it, and though she has a 6 month waiting list, she got me on the list much sooner. So I pulled the trigger and scheduled it. I'm stoked. My final consultation is late September, and the sitting will be a couple weeks later.

Lots of cool stuff going on.
Check out my flickr site, I update that with drawings and pics every so often.

New house, independence day, and poker

We closed on our house!
I'm officially in SERIOUS debt.
But on a positive note, we're going to be finally paying toward our own future, instead of paying into our landlord's savings account. Now we have Air Conditioning, and we'll definitely need it. We (hopefully) will no longer have to deal with downtown San Jose's ruffians, sleep through the sounds of gunfire, walk past mean looking bums and meaner looking gangsters just to get to the corner store. How refreshing that would be?

We walked through it yesterday and met our new neighbors, Bob and Laurel. They seem genuinely nice. And they have some anti-Bush/anti-Iraq war stickers on their garbage cans. So chances are, we'll get along fine. As long as they don't mind the occasional late night, rowdy poker night.

Speaking of poker. I took down a 2nd place and a win in last week's poker games at Eric's house to bank a couple hundo in cold hard ones. That too was quite a refreshing change for me. My online cold streak has continued, with a bit of a warming trend as of late. Interestingly enough, I tend to do well in live games when my online game sucks and vice versa.

Happy Independence Day!
We spent a few hours at JoeO's new place for the fourth. It was an old fashioned all-american pool party. Chicks in bikini's, dogs on grill, guacamole, chips, tons-o-beer. And it was a hot one, so the pool was really really necessary.
We followed it up with dinner at Sam's. Marissa made us some awesome flank steak wrapped with herb cheese and sun-dried tomatoes, a zucchini pie and grilled string beans. ... oh and tons more beer.

I couldn't make it to see the fireworks, but they sure sounded great.

Dragon

Dragon smoke, originally uploaded by Joe_13.

Here's my latest attempt at drawing a japanese style dragon. It's definitely a challenging subject, but I feel more confident every time I draw one. Drawing smoke properly is a mystery to me, but I'm sure I'll figure it out soon enough.
So, so far most of my drawings are straight black ink, but I intend to go back and work on my coloring skills once my Wacom tablet arrives. Screw going out to buy colored pencils (which cost major duckets) when I can buy a Wacom tablet and color til my eyes bleed.

Also these black pieces could be an awesome tattoo-styled coloring book once I compile 20 or so.

KOI

KOI, originally uploaded by Joe_13.

I drew this a couple nights ago.
Using lots of references, I finally feel comfortable drawing the waves and the scales. It seems that I need to draw stuff a couple times before I feel competent drawing them from memory.
My pen and Ink confidence is growing, and I feel my inking is improving.
The next challenge is to color some of my images. I think I'll use my recent drawings as a coloring book to practice my color skills.

In other events:
Spent the weekend in Lake Tahoe for SamD's bachelor party. We did the usual required bachelor party activities; of course strippers and massive amounts of beers. There were Patron shots at one point. Also a lot of dude bonding: some non-gay sauna and hot tub sessions, a boat excursion, and tons more beer. We also managed to play a bit of poker and blackjack at the casinos. We also ate like kings all weekend. So all-in-all, a damn fine adventure.
Congrats to Sam.

BIG stakes poker

Check out high stakes poker player Brian Townsend's (sbrugby) blog.
The world series of poker is going on right now, and he's there playing some fucking ridiculous stakes with the high rollers at Bellagio.
He can be frequently found online playing against the likes of Phil Ivey and Patrik Antonius, both of whom play the highest stakes poker in the world. Some of the pots these guys are in can literally buy a house (or houses, plural, in some cities).