The cool thing about spending hours after school at my old babysitter’s was that she lived close to the railroad tracks in Humboldt. Other kids and I would often check out the graffiti that someone had painted on trains. The trains came from who knows were in the country, but people in that area were pretty apt with a spray can. I remember graffiti artists painted vivid colors, perfect shapes, and innovative designs on the side of the trains. The extreme talent they showed made graffiti seem cool to me.

Apparently those graf artists didn’t reside in Philadelphia. It’s not about showing off your abilities around here. It’s instead just tagging; it looks like crap. Look around Philadelphia and you’ll hardly see any graffiti painted by anyone with talent. Instead walls are just an endless lackluster mural people’s initials and possibly the crown for the Latin Kings gang.

I really don’t get it. Did some PR rep for the Kings come up with this dumb idea for exposure? Am I supposed to give them more credibility because they’ve tagged walls and other objects all over the city? It’s not working. I’m no more afraid of them. Still a minor threat in my book. And nobody’s counting the number of crowns like in GTA San Andreas.

Then there’s people who find a line and tag everything in sight with their initials. One guy tagged his initials on a line of bus stops near my office all the way into the subway station. Wow. You can paint three letters over an over. Am I supposed to be impressed? Am I supposed to be scared of you now? Does this make you a hardened thug that I’m going to run from at first sight?

No. And how would I know it’s you when I see you? I can’t tell who the hell you are from three letters, especially when a significant portion of the world has those same initials, you idiot.

This has really ruined my appreciation of graffiti. Where did the artists go? The only thing I’ve seen close to actual artistic graffiti in Philly has been ads for Colt 45 and Pabst Blue Ribbon, and Philadelphia residents want them taken down.

Graffiti in Lawrence isn’t much better. All that you see is stencils painted by whiny activist groups that don’t have the guts to present their ideas in person.

Sad that the art died. Where brilliantly detailed artists used to show off their skills on the side of trains, now every random punk is etching his initials with a key on the window of a subway car.

My nerd is showing.

I’m very distracted at work because the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is this week. It’s the video game nerd’s annual weeklong overdose on video game trailers and gadget pr0n. It usually has great coverage from any media or individual at the convention relaying the goings-on back to their home Web site. But this year coverage has gotten much better thanks to Twitter.

In case you’re wondering what’s this Twitter I’m talking about, it is a miniblogging Web site similar to your Facebook status where you try to get your point across in very few characters. ...

Believe it or not, it took me a month to visit all the historic stuff in Philadelphia.



Old City is definitely aimed at tourists. Being such, you have to pay to visit most things. They have a National Constitution Center that’s $12 to get into. Independence Hall costs some amount for a tour. But my friends and I are cheap so we stuck to the free stuff.

The highlight was the Liberty Bell — a symbol of equality and freedom in our country. It was used as a symbol for abolition and later for women’s ...

I am by no means a giant environmentalist pansy like the people you can find a dime a dozen around Lawrence. In fact, I hope the damn dirty hippies die in a very nongreen way, like inhalation of too many car exhaust fumes. But I have found myself taking up some green actions here in Philadelphia.

I still believe that global warming is extremely overhyped. I don’t believe it’s that important either – I, the most important human being outside Jesus Christ, won’t be around by the time the exaggerated harm begins. But I can ...

The newsroom I’m working in this summer is vastly different from the one I’m used to at the Kansan.

The first and most obvious difference is the size. The Inquirer Building has 15 floors, two of which make up the newsroom. I haven’t ventured to most of the other 13, but the cafeteria’s on four. The newsroom is set up as a sea of cubicles, with a few aisles and printer islands in between. Banners hanging from pillars in the aisles indicate where each news department is, just in case you get lost – yes I have.

Everyone has ...

From day one, Philly’s had me scratching my head.

To reduce hassle in the airport, I didn’t bring a lot of toiletries. After I settled into my dorm room on the University of Pennsylvania campus, I went to a grocery store to stock up on toiletries and food. Everything is way more expensive on the East Coast. A can of tuna jumped from 60 cents in Kansas to 95 cents. Avocadoes jumped a dollar to $3. Deli turkey in Kansas costs around $4.50 per pound. Here it’s $3.79 per half-pound. Needless to say I’ve cut eating and quality of ...

Now with my video game addiction story out of the way, my focus shifts to my finals. Yeah right. I’m pumped for my summer in Philadelphia.

This summer I will be a copyediting intern The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philly’s largest newspaper.

It’s going to be a weird switch, going from growing up in the 2,000-person Southeast Kansas town of Humboldt to working on the East coast in the country’s sixth most populous city, with more than 5 million people. Lawrence, with a population of 80,000, was a strange enough switch for me.

I’m still a country boy. I’m going from ...