Friday, November 02, 2007

Turns out my name isnt "Benito"

I just got my birth certificate in the mail and it turns out my name isnt "Benito" like i was led to believe my entire life.

Ok, so first, why I am just NOW seeing my birth certificate.

See, the wonderful company that I work for has started bringing me along to their highly exclusive "Diamond Club" trips in order to provide multimedia and photography services. This actually works out pretty good for me since the locations are chosen for their tourist appeal. The idea is to pamper those in attendance.

This time we're heading to the Bahamas. I've never been before so i did some reading and it turns out that in order to get back in the country you need either a) a passport or b) a birth certificate + gov't issued ID.

I waited too long to get my passport (I blame today's culture of instant communication and printable insurance cards) so i had to call up mom to get a copy of the birth certificate. She is wonderful. She obtained a copy of it, got it notarized and overnighted it to me.

This is what I saw when i opened it:

So there you have it. Benita. That's me.

For the uninitiated, my entire name should be "Juan Benito Mora Segovia Patoine". From the copy you can see that they tried to fix their first attempt by re-spelling "Juan" and adding "Segovia". Incredibly they got it all right except my first name. There was only one clue available...


The Good News

I will admit that i've always had a sad feeling that I would go through life and never experience the fun administrative things you can do with yourself legally. One of these experiences is legally changing my name. In that light, what a fortunate error i've stumbled upon!

So, instead of trying to get this "corrected" i'm just going to file for a legal name change!

Thursday, August 02, 2007

Wierd Ass Dream "Demon Hunter"


I've always had pretty vivid dreams but lately they are getting WAAY more involved and intense. So, i've started writing them down. As of late they've ranged from not so crazy (such as being naked at your own birthday party) to REALLY wacky (such as being shot and killed by Harvey Keitel [ and his accomplices Kevin Costner and Kevin Bacon]). Anyway, the text below is my recount of the most recent dream I had. I illustrated some of the characters i encountered in it. I plan to do more since it was so visually fantastic.


The Dream


It was set in a post Rapture world. Most of the humans have been killed or taken. It's a Godless land.


I start the dream running in the night. I have this memory of a great demon uprising where most of us were killed and it's been many years since that. I've somehow managed to survive.


However, I'm still new to this strange dangerous world and I don't posses core instincts to survive yet.


It's night, full bright moon, and I'm running barefoot. I hear a high pitched wheezing behind me, chasing me. I turn to look and see a little root-like creature about 3-4ft tall with razor sharp teeth and no eyes. I think he might be made of wood. I'm freaking out. "what the fuck is this thing?"


Although he's chasing me, I'm faster. After putting a little ground between us i start to calm down. I just don't know where I can hide to be safe, can he sense me? Will he eventually catch up to me if I stop?


I pass through a stone wall doorway and start to slow. The moonlight is spilling into the doorway creating long shadows that seem to reach for me. Then i hear the panting again, this time faster paced. I turn and the little beast is sprinting straight for me, faster than i could run! Fight or Flight?


Fight.


I start wondering how i could fight him, but he just jets past me. I think he looked scared. What's he running from? Not wanting to confront it, i duck into a shadow and wait. From the moonlight in the door i see a human figure approach. It's a little boy but something is off… he has a muddy pillow case tied around his eyes and he's sprinting after the thing with inhuman speed.


I appear to be in an abandoned apartment complex because they rounded the corner into an alley-like entrance way. My heart is pounding away. I'm scared as shit. I run past the opening only to glance over and see the little boy holding the creatures head to the concrete and chewing on it. I'm really freaking out now.


I cut into the apartments thinking their cluster of units will serve me refuge. I find a door that is sufficiently random enough and break in. All the lights are on and none of the interior doors have doorknobs. It appears to be a townhouse and the downstairs consists of a hallway with 8 rooms (presumably bedrooms), 4 rooms on each side.


The first thought was to find shoes. I'm too vulnerable barefoot so i start rummaging for shoes. Every room is a mess as though the people living there took what they could and left. I find what I'm looking for in the last room on the right; a pile of shoes and boots. I grabbed a pair of thick brown socks with teal stripes. (Strangely they were without a heel). After tossing aside a few pairs of boots, I find a pair that fit fairly well.


As I was tying them I heard some girls arguing upstairs. They sounded young, adolescent or younger. Just as I was about to go up there to meet them I heard a footstep outside the door. I peered through the knob hole and it was the little boy and he had something in his hand. A knife perhaps, i couldn't tell. I see him head up the stairs. I knew he was going to hurt them.


I opened the door and crept after him. The first step in those boots felt amazing. Something changed and I didn’t know what. i stalked the kid, up the stairs without sound. He was moving slowly, like his legs didn’t want to comply. As we rounded the corner of the stairs and he stops for a second, almost sensing me... decides it's nothing and keeps creeping toward the sound of the girls.


Then one of them came out into the upstairs hallway and looked at us. Her eyes were terrified, she wasn't sure who was the threat. I acted. I pointed at her and said, "GET BACK IN THAT ROOM!"


The kid turns his head completely, bares his teeth and darts into the room on his left. i didn't know why he's running from me but I'm wasn't going to let him get away. As soon as i enter the room he turns into a fist-sized tick and i see him crawl out of a small window opening. I throw it open just in time to see him flip across to the opposite wall. A 30ft tall redbrick wall, 5 ft away.


Without thinking I jump the gap, find a foot and handhold and within two leaps I've scaled the wall.

I felt like a god! Instantly, it was day and i find a construction worker on the other side of the wall. I ask him if he's seen a giant tick and he says "yea, just went into this crack here... lemme fish it out for you."


He grabs a trowel and slips it into the muddy crack and pulls out a bunch of gunk. A spider crawls on his finger and know it's the fucking child-demon. The worker winces and flicks the spider back on the brick. Says, "uh oh, that was poisonous wasn't it?" and passes out. I grab a ball-pin hammer that was on the tope of the wall and smash the thing as fast as i could. At the last second it turned into a hard shelled larvae of some sort. The exoskeleton cracked and juice sprayed all over me, my face, lips etc. I thought i might be killed if it got in my mouth.


Exhausted, I follow a path tp a small human encampment. They called themselves the "Stranded" (Gears of War reference) and they appeared to be a community of survivors banding together to defend against the demons. The demons were relentlessly trying to get into the camp. To destroy everyone.


The current threat at the camp were shape-shifters who took human form. Although, they never got it quite right, they were getting better. Suddenly, the closing bell for the workers sounded and they started filing into their bunker for the night. The two men on the end seemed off to me and after staring at them i saw that they were demons. I tried to warn the rest but they took no heed and when the bunker doors closed i heard screams. i assumed they had all died.


That when i decided to keep moving, and woke up.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Regarding this difficult matter of Dark Matter

BORING ALERT: For those of you who could care less about astrophysics or anything relating to the cosmos, just stop reading right now.

So I woke up this morning at around 1:30am with a possible solution to this whole "Accelerating Universe" thing. (For those of you unfamiliar with what I'm talking about see waaay below). So struck was I to find out if I was right, or more likely, totally wrong I wrote my thoughts to me personal Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. (If you currently don't have a favorite astrophysicist you should get one - I vote for Neil!)

I just sent it this morning so i don't expect a response right away but I'm excited to see if he has anything to say about it!

Here's my email to him:

Mr. Tyson,

I was thinking heavily on this mysterious problem of Dark Energy that seems to be accelerating our universe outward. At around 1:30am a possible explanation popped into my head. I'm sure this may have already been considered and, likely, found untrue.


I was reading a summary of Einstein's Theory of relativity when I came across a thought inducing sentence: "…space and time emerged from Einstein's reworking as malleable constructs whose form and appearance depend on one's state of motion."


This whole "appearance depending on one's state of motion" thing got me thinking. Perhaps the universe isn't actually speeding up but rather, we're slowing down? I'm not great at analogies but I'm going to give it a shot.


Think about two Yo-Yo's. One has a longer string than the other. That string could represent gravity, the longer the string, the weaker the gravity. The actual Yo-Yo represents a sphere of space (extended from the Universal Center) or a body of mass. If you release each Yo-Yo from it's starting point (Big Bang) the two would see themselves accelerating toward earth at the same rate. However, when the shorter yo-yo reaches the end of its string it begins to decelerate. If you were standing on the shorter yo-yo, it would appear as though the longer yo-yo were speeding away with a sudden boost in acceleration when in fact the observer has simply slowed.


I know it's not completely polished but it was something that made me think "What would Neil say?"

I would be honored with your thoughts on my amateur-ish Eureka moment!


Cheers!

Benito Segovia

On the topic of the accelerating universe: It's pretty commonly accepted that we all emerged from this Big Bang thing and ever since we've been rocketing away from the Universal core at approximately the same speed as everything else. Well, many wondered how long we could keep expanding until our own collective gravity slowed us down, eventually stopped us, and reversed the direction everything was moving.

Recent observations have found that instead of the universe grinding to a halt, it seems to be accelerating further outward. This has confounded physicists to a point of coming up with something called Dark Matter being held responsible for the massive amount of gravity required to power this kind of acceleration. Dark Matter and Dark Energy are now hotly debated and no proof of their existence yet exists.

Anyway, here's hoping he responds.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Settling in in Houston

I'm In!

The move went well. We split the drive from Atlanta to Houston in half with a stop in New Orleans. Desha recommended I go to Jacques Imo's but alas, since it was Sunday, they were closed.

Arrived on Monday around 7:00pm so we decided to call it a night considering we'd been driving for over 8hrs. The U-haul guy gave me a shit load of extra miles and an extra day with the truck so we took our time. I ended up unloading it all myself with Noelle carrying the smaller items and organizing stuff inside the apartment. It was incredibly easy actually.

The Awesome Apartment

My apartment is friggin awesome. It's right in an area called Upper Kirby which, after driving around a bit, reminds me of a few areas of Atlanta. Specifically Little Five Points, Dunwoody, Decatur, Mid-town, and Buckhead. Just take the best parts of all those areas and you've got my little neighborhood. I'm across the street from just about anything i could want.

There is an old theatre house that has been converted to a book store. Three starbucks (I love coffee!). Two grocery stores, Randall's and Whole Foods. Randall's is like a slightly nicer Publix. We also have Kroger if I'm ever feeling like NOT spending $100 for a few items of food.

Noelle is awesome

Noelle has been awesome this whole time. It's her spring break so she's dedicated this week to "Assimilate Benito Week". I made that up, not her.

New Stuff - No more Katrina victim beds

I left my bed in Atlanta so i still need to get one. I'm going to go ahead and get a nice one this time. No more Katrina beds for me. See, i'm moving up. First I slept on an airmatress for about 9months, then I slept on a triple hand-me-down bed from New Orleans - post Katrina (don't worry, a small family wasnt recued on it, Desha's boyfriend Peyton gifted it to me - he's clean - I think.)

Working from Home

Anyway, Since I'm going to be working remotely from Houston a big part of my new apartment will have to be the office area. I want it to be totally conducive to working so half-assing it here either. My personal goal is to "be at work" by 8am every morning (9am Atlanta time). This includes taking a shower and putting on "work-like" clothes. So no underwear conference calls. Gotta dress for success right? We'll see how that works out.

Storm City

Holy Storms! I've been here 3 days and we've already got a flood warning and some massive torrential downpour. apparently Houston has a "Hurricane Season" so that means I'll be prone to dying and stuff. This is new to me since Atlanta seems to be in this environmental status field (tornadoes rarely enter the city, no earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, volcanoes, blizzards, forest fires, landslides or meteorites). Today it rained like a pisser. I'm on the ground floor so I'm just waiting for the day when I wake up and step into a puddle, maybe into a small pool.

Anyway. Noelle is in the kitchen putting stuff away while I sit here and blab away on MySpace. Wish us luck!

Cheers!
Benito

Credits

I just want to thank everyone for helping me move out and kicking total ass dealing with my epic disorganization during the move process. (We ended up throwing everything into giant 4.5cu. ft. boxes. - My salt shakers, for example, were empty upon arrival.)