Just add water

The holidays are almost over, with only about nine hours left until it's 2008. Christmas presents were mostly DVDs: I now have the complete Matrix trilogy, Scrubs up to season six, the fifth Harry Potter movie, and Ratatouille. I got the two games I wanted: Super Mario Galaxy and Zack & Wiki. And then I played those video games and watched the two newer seasons of Scrubs.

Not really a very exciting time after Christmas, I know, but there's nothing like a sudden punch of something I want to call the flu. I don't feel up for eating because of my inCREDIBLE threesies that come upon me like the Great Flood, but what was really fun was the horrible bout of dehydration I faced this morning, which I felt I could put off taking care of until I finished my shower. Steam doesn't help with nausea.

And in spite of this feeling of creeping death coming upon me, I can't help but think about the year that I have ahead of me. I don't really consider the new year to be MY new year. My new year begins on my birthday. Of course, this is the time when everybody goes on and makes their resolutions. I've only got a few this year, but I think they're better than those that I've had in years past (stay sane):

1) Keep my grades above the level required for the Regent's scholarship.
2) Stay true to my heart.

I don't know how well I can keep to the first resolution, but having dealt with a year and a half of college already, and I feel like my classes will be easy enough this semester that I won't have to strain too much for A's in these classes. As for staying true to my heart, I've struggled with what it means to be in love for a long time now. I've also worried about how I might stray from what my heart tells me to do. I know how it can sometimes seem like there isn't any chance for my heart to escape the darkness. A video game I played recently posed the question "Why are you afraid of the darkness?" and it answered itself, "Because of the people who are lurking in the darkness." I know that my heart has spent some time in the darkness. It's vern in the light for longer, but now it has a pretty hard task ahead of it: it has to bring another heart out of the darkness.

Was this blog inspired more by exhaustion or dehydration? You decide!

Home

It's been almost a week since I came back home for Christmas, and I think I've been overall less stressed... than I thought I would be. With all of the extra time I have, I've been playing a lot of Kingdom Hearts II (although I admit that I was playing a lot of that game during finals week, as well) and hefty amounts of Pokémon. My mom accuses me of spending all of my time on the computer, but this is only a half-truth. I merely spend most of my time in front of the computer. And it tends to be on during that time, but it's hardly ever the center of it attention like my PS2 or DS.

I realize some very important facts about the being home as well. For instance, my bed is hopelessly uncomfortable. I have no understanding as to why this is so, but the fact remains. I have a foam cushion, and a second cushion on top of my mattress, and it does no good whatsoever. My bed, in fact, is like a black hole, in its ability to suck the comfy properties out of nearly anything you might find to throw on it. I've sometimes considered just sleeping on the floor. Of course, that's cluttered with stuff from college, and so it's out of the running (or rather, laying). Another important discovery is that my house doesn't warm up very well. My hands seem unreasonably cold more often than not, and if I didn't have socks I'm sure that my feet might have fallen off by now.

I'm incredibly glad that I have my own computer. I wouldn't dare try to interface with the family machine outside of my room. This has nothing to do with Mac snobbery; our computer has managed to get itself into a worse condition than many of Doabe's laptops. I attribute this to the outdated processor, the seven anti-spyware programs, the five anti-virus programs, the three weekly system restores, and a partridge in a pear tree.

My room is incredibly green. I've know this for some time now, but it's disturbing to me nonetheless. I have also noticed that ever since the repainting of the bathroom, I've had much fewer suicidal thoughts while brushing my teeth and showering.

Tomorrow, I take on the task of wrapping five Christmas presents. There will likely be a vlog about this, because it is comedic gold. Maybe I'll find some of that British chase sequence music and do the whole scene in fast-forward... Yeah.

Political lollerskates

I need a solid...

In registering for my classes next semester, I was told to take certain classes over others, and that other classes that are prerequisites would be carried over via the magic of transferred credits.

Enter JOUR-102: The Art of Writing. A little while back, I got an email from the supreme overlord of eloquence and syntax at UNL's journalism department saying that in order to qualify for this class, I would need to take a grammar comprehension exam to prove that I can, in fact, write good.

I need to get a pass from Andersen Hall in order to take the exam at all, and then I need to go to Burnett Hall some time between 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM on Monday through Thursday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM on Friday, and 1:00pm to 9:00 pm on Sunday. I'm guessing that this should get done before the end of UNL's semester, or before the beginning of their next semester...

HALP.

Four ideas for today.

1) Avatar season 3 should DEFINITELY warrant people wanting to come visit me in my room.
2) If I'm ever immortalized in mural form, I want to be depicted holding a sword shaped like a lightning bolt.
3) "No doubt" is synonymous with "no kidding" when you're from Oregon.
4) I think that "Porn" is a funny name for a hard drive.

Blogging from bed, again.

Okay, one of the inherent perks to a laptop is this: being able to use a full, ten-finger keyboard to blog.

Thanksgiving went off without a hitch. We left the house only a half-hour behind schedule, which is unheard of in my family; we had Burger King for lunch, and they've brought back the Italian Chicken Sandwich (formerly the mediterranean chicken sandwich, but still so delicious); the Packers beat the Lions; and the turkey wasn't dry.

So all in all, plans for the family went well. It's really good to know that things can work out better than you'd hoped sometimes.

Mall of America tomorrow, of course, might prove tricky. I've only got $125 to spend between about five relatives' gifts.

I'm always so caught up in hilarious misadventures, sometimes I think my plans will never go off smoothly. I guess only time will tell if the best laid plans can't still go awry. Maybe there's hope for haphazard ones, though.

Mac vs. Cheese

I had to check out a laptop from the library in order to be able to do my homework over the weekend, due to the fact that I can't really haul my iMac around very well. Twenty pounds of raw computing power fixed on an anodized aluminum stand that are required to be plugged into an outlet don't really transfer well to the idea of "the road."

So I have this lappy at the ready for when I need to punch out my pages of the group project on The United States of Europe for my macroeconomics class. I took on the task of writing about how the unification of Europe tackles economic principles number 5 and 8. What are economic principles 5 and 8, you ask? I don't have a clue. We just knew that there were eight principles to be divvied up, and so I took 5 and 8. To balance this out, I'm also spearheading the presentation on one of the principles, which finally justifies my owning of Apple's alternative to Powerpoint: Keynote.

With the rough five variations of laptops to be checked out from the library, it's a mixed bag whether or not you'll get a laptop that's actually usable. In this sense, I lucked out, getting an HP something-or-other with an AMD Turion dual-core, 64-bit processor, and a little sticker ensuring me that this sucker is Windows Vista Capable. In other words, it's better than the Pentium 3s that I could have been stuck with.

But now that I'm finally using a computer other than my Mac for a prolonged period for the first time in a year, it's time to make the brutal comparisons.

First of which is that I'm relegated to Meebo for talking to my friends. This is by no means a bad thing. Meebo rocks. But the fact that I can't install any of my preferred IM applications on this machine is a bit of a downer. What if I like AIM? Of course, this isn't a problem relevant to Windows, it's just the cold, hard fact of being on a computer I checked out from a library.

This, however, isn't: the colors of Blogger are horrendously muddled. To the point where the normally tan interface is a disgustingly drab gray. It may or may not be a good thing that the color reminds me of Doane's food...

My other big gripe with this laptop is that good lord, the speakers are absolutely terrible. I never realized just how good Apple is at tuning their speakers, or maybe just selecting speakers that don't suck, but these speakers, and the ones in the monitor of my family's computer (which is also an HP) leave a veritable ear load to be desired.

But other than that, this will get me through the weekend swimmingly. Now the question becomes one of "will I actually do any of my homework?"

Refocused

og. That's just how scatterbrained I am. My train of thought goes from one thing to another without necessarily finishing one thought. When I was a kid, I wanted to be in the video game industry, and then I got sidetracked with theatre for four years. Granted, it was a very fun four years and I hope to get sidetracked with it again, but it did distract me from my video games for a very, very long time.

This blog was to be finished last night, but distraction kept that from happening, too. Getting sidetracked is just a part of life, I think. Given the number of things that we all take in and do over the span of a day, it's impossible not to become distracted to the point of actually forgetting what you were doing in the first place.

Take rehearsal tonight, for example. It was supposed to be a complete run of the first act of Arabian Nights. The first act begins with a dance number, though, and we ended up rehearsing that for the first two hours of tonight. Then we only got through roughly the first hour of what we were supposed to get through.

We had a specific goal in mind coming into this thing, yes, but we ended up diverting from that for an insane amount of time. And it upset me a bit, and it tired me a lot, but the fact of the matter is that the dance is probably going to be better because of it, and the first act can be finessed later. It takes less practice than a very intricate dance scene.

So it was a good thing that Robin got sidetracked tonight, and decided to work on the dance. Even if it was crap to do it there, it will pay off later.

But getting sidetracked isn't always a good thing. Sometimes it can lead you to stay up for about an hour or four more than you wanted to one night. It can even lead you to break a promise you made to a friend, or cause you not to see that something in front of you is better than something in your peripheral. It can cause us to get distracted from the bigger picture, from what you've got.

Sometimes getting sidetracked will take you to heights you wouldn't normally achieve, but more often it's a negative thing, and all you can do is hope that you can get back on your original track before too much of an impact is made.

Sidetracked.

I tend to have a ton of stuff on my mind at the same time. Right now, I'm making conversation with six people, listening to music, and writing this blog. Less than an hour ago, I remembered that I had some German to do. It didn't take very long at all, but it was still annoying to remember.

I'm having a little trouble getting this blog done, admittedly, because I'm having conversations with people online. See, I get sidetracked easily. All today, I knew I had to shave, but then I had to get a muffin and coffee, and then I had to read my book for econ, and then I had to practice music for juries, and then I had other stuff, and other stuff, and then I had dinner, followed sharply by rehearsal. Long story short, I never ended up shaving.

This happens to me a lot. I'll know that I have something important to do, like email my accompanist, and I end up putting it off for way too long because I simply let other things override my thought process, even though the action is pertinent, or something.

And in my spare time, I'm trying to write a fictional blog on here, but it takes a lot of concentration and time, which is being interspersed over the course of many nights' worth of rehearsals, but no afternoons of laziness, or any other such time slot. Why not, I don't know. It's not that I don't want to write the thing, or that I find it boring, or that I even find it to be difficult. I just have other things that I'm doing.

And I don't think there's really anybody who can say whether one thing that I do is more important than something else that I do. But it wouldn't surprise me if this trend causes me to suddenly stop writing this bl

Bad fries, questionable rings, and a pretty good chicken sandwich

The title doesn't have much to do with the topic of this blog, I don't think. It's just the product of Tiger Inn, where I got some bad fries, saw one of the workers pick onion rings out of a deep fryer bare-handed, and got a pretty good grilled chicken sandwich.

In the past week, I've had my American government professor tell me that I seem more depressed recently not once, but twice. I don't know what he bases this notion on. At all. I can't feel any noticeable change in my behavior now compared to when I started his class, other than the fact that I've learned since starting his class that it is far less about American government as it is about the War on Terror, which he regards as the defining issue of our generation (in spite of the fact that nobody in class feels the same way), but as far as my overall attitude goes, I don't think that he could logically base his view of my mental health on three fifty-minute windows of time during which he sees me. Still, I'm not one to take somebody's observation of how I've been acting and just throw it out the window.

I went to my director Robin midday on Friday and asked him if I seemed like I've been depressed lately. He said that he wouldn't call it "depressed," but that I've been acting somewhat different lately. More introverted, perhaps, but not really depressed. This still surprised me, because I don't really think that I've been more introverted this year, especially compared to last year.

And my friends Caitie and Kathryn have also talked to me about how I tend to say things that are really depressing. Even people that I talk to online say that I've been acting withdrawn lately.

Still, I don't notice what everyone is talking about. I'm starting to wonder if I'm wearing my heart on my back and I just can't tell that I'm dumping all of these negative feelings out, or if this is like when you have something embarrassing written on your forehead, and people tell you, but you can't see what it says for yourself, because you're too close to yourself to see it.

In those instances, you always have to find a mirror in order to see what's going on.

I took an online screening for depression today because I was curious as to whether I would test yes to that. My results told me that I was more likely to have bipolar disorder than depression, so I took the online test for that. Three minutes later, I was told that I don't likely have bipolar disorder, and I was out the door and into the coffee shop just in time to get a muffin and a chai latté just before the lunch period started. Still, so many people are telling me I don't seem like myself lately.

Can anybody hand me a mirror?

Lunacy and lunarcy

It is often a practice of mine to do things that I have absolutely no intention of revisiting, even though they're incredibly funny or poignant at the time that I do them. A very recent example of this -- now invalidated by my talking about it on my blog -- is the night of Arabian Nights rehearsal during which I spread water on my butt while I was offstage because my character ran into the scene complaining about diarrhea. It was a stroke of genius brought on by my visit to the water fountain and my incredibly random nature.

Sitting in work-study today, I watched a few episodes of Scrubs, listened to a podcast from IGN Wii-k in Review (while I sat in reverie at the games coming out this and next year. We are looking at another shot at the gaming Golden Age right now), and tried many times to get my iPod to connect to the internet. Being that I'm sitting at the front desk's workstation right now, it's safe to say that my attempts failed.

The failure did, however, allow one of my iPod's more interesting features to shine through. The feature, you ask? My calendar.

While wholly spectacular inventions in and of themselves, calendars have been mostly overlooked by the general populous as simple chotchkies to be hung on the kitchen wall and ignored until you need to know what day or year it is for the check that you're writing. But the idea of extensible calendars, which allow for much more information than can fit in a 1 1/2 square-inch box, is bringing the practicality and -- let's face it -- fun back into having places to be at certain times of the day.

Perhaps one of the most interesting calendars of the non-extensible form, however, is the giant stone one located in Latin America, cradled in a Mayan ruin. The calendar gives proof that the Mayans were at least dilligent timekeepers, as it has on it the dates of lunar eclipses and other celestial happenings. But unfortunately for anybody visiting the Mayan ruins and wondering what the stars will be doing in 2011, the Mayan calendar only keeps up on such information until December 12, 2010: the day which the Mayans playfully describe as "the end of the world."

Having heard of this back in my junior or senior year of high school from a member of Bellevue East's forensics team, and having been exposed to stories of the calendar before then, I made, in a stroke of random whimsy, a schedule of events for December 12, 2010. I bring this up now, because the very same schedule somehow migrated from Google Calendar, where I first wrote it out, to my iPod's calendar, for me to stumble upon this afternoon. Here's what I've got myself doing:

12 AM - Panic
2:30 AM - Panic some more
6 AM - Spongebob Squarepants
9 AM - Eat breakfast at McDonalds
10 AM - Panic
1 PM - Late lunch
2 PM - Prayer
3 PM - Prayer
4 PM - Prayer
5 PM - The Simpsons
6 PM - Prayer
7 PM - Prayer
8 PM - Work on forensics piece
9 PM - Buy a hammer
10 PM - Build sculpture of Campbell (my forensics coach)
10:30 PM - Destroy sculpture of Campbell
11 PM - Panic and pray

In my exceptional genius, I planned out this schedule and excluded an hour for eating dinner. I'm sure I had a reason at the time for why I don't eat any kind of final meal, maybe in reverence to all of the foods that I should have tried by this point but hadn't, maybe in a kind of observance to God that I'm not full unless I have Him dwelling inside me, or maybe it was just because I knew that I probably wouldn't be hungry that night. In any case, why would it take me an hour to find and buy a hammer?

In the sun

On the top shelf of my minifridge, right next to my most recent acquisition of orange soda, is a single can of grape-flavored Tropicana Twister brand soda.

The story behind this can is a simple one: Tiger Inn used to sell cans of grape soda at the beginning of the year. That's where the can comes from. The reason it's the only one in my fridge is because I realized shortly after getting it that it was actually one of the last cans of grape soda that Tiger Inn would stock. Not being one to simply consume something that suddenly becomes almost unique in a torrent of immediacy, I decided that I wouldn't drink the grape soda just because I wanted to.

I decided that the grape soda would be for a special occasion, like a very cheap and nonalcoholic imitation of champagne. The grape soda would be celebratory.

But since the scarcity of the can is so high, this is quite possibly the most special can of grape soda I have ever owned. It doesn't deserve to be taken after something as mundane as getting a paycheck, or something as common as writing a paper. This takes something that could be deemed a cornerstone of my life.

Arguably, there was a case for drinking it when I turned 20. You only enter a new decade of your life, like, every five to seven years. But I don't really regard an age as a cornerstone. Certainly, it's a milestone, by which I can measure how far I've come up to this point, but as far as achievements go... It just doesn't seem like something to cheer about.

I would say that that's the only real mile/cornerstone that I've hit since I got the can. There's the purchase of this iPod, but that just means that I had $300 at some point recently. Material goods, unless they're monumental, shouldn't really count for much. If this had been an iPod that I won in a contest, or if it had been a purchase made because I won a good sum of money in a contest, then I'd drink the grape soda.

I guess that some people would argue that I am putting too much thought into what I would consider to be a cornerstone. I'm sure that others still would think that it's just a stupid can of grape soda and that I should get over it. It's my belief that these latter people do not have grape soda of their own, and are therefore rationalizing that it's probably a can of sour grape soda, anyway.

And to the former group, I would have to say that I am confident in my ability to discern a cornerstone in my life from the mundane and the routine.

So until I find that cornerstone, I know I'll have that grape soda waiting for me on the top shelf of my minifridge.

Tangled in a web of blogs!

First, there was myspace. And for a time, it was good. Then I realized that myspace was mostly tailored for kids who were too young to actually access the site but wanted to because all of their other emo friends were on it and adding Simple Plan to their glorified HTML tables. How could this happen to me, indeed.

Then, there was Facebook, which for the longest time, didn't allow for blog posts, until a little before they started opening up their platform and came up with a little app known as "notes." These were, for all accounts and purposes, blogs. The advantage, however, was that you could tag your friends and let them know that you mentioned them or were thinking of them when you wrote that little "some people who just need to die" post one drunken evening.

Then came Blogger. And at first, it was mostly overlooked. Then they added the ability to include Google ads in your posts, and writing crap about your life became a feasible way to make money. Plus, you could import your blog from Blogger to Myspace through the RSS feed. And so there became a clean way to keep your friends close and your random blog-crawling strangers closer.

Now enter Wordpress: a blog with a number of clean layouts, and traffic viewers (really handy for seeing if anybody really does visit your blog or if you're just writing to a vacuum). It seems to have all of the advantages of Blogger, plus it can be searched on sites like Google and... Sphere? What?

But so comes the incredibly weird series of questions one must ask himself: is this worth the hassle? Is the hassle worth the knowing? Will the knowing possibly make me not want to do this anymore? Will this post upload to Wordpress? Will Facebook then pick up the post off of Wordpress? Will the emo kids ever shake loose of the grasp of Myspace and its stupidly simple design that even one of the many pubescent emo kids on it could have thought up and then created? Should I make that LOLyrics site?

None of these have easy answers. The real irony is that I'm tangling myself in a web of blogs, and that "blog" is a shortening of "web log," which makes redundant my sentence, but nobody would say that it's proper syntax to say "I'm tangling myself up in a blogs," so here we are.

Why I didn't write a blog today.

“A Modern Proposal”

The medical world of today has a wealth of tools at its disposal for treating sick people: Vaccines prevent people from getting seriously ill; medications help fight bacteria, ward off infection, and bolster the capabilities of various functions of the body; there are now cameras and tools small enough to fit through incisions less than an inch large for operations that would otherwise be highly invasive; methods of analyzing a person’s body with high-powered magnets have made otherwise invisible causes of illness visible.

But for all of the advances medicine has made in treating people, there is still no way to save a vital organ once it has failed. At that point, it becomes necessary to find a replacement organ in order to prevent the patient from dying. This requires either a deceased person to have been an organ donor, or in the case of certain organs, a live person who is willing to give the organ. Unfortunately, these circumstances don’t occur frequently enough as to keep the ratio of sick people to healthy donors balanced (or, preferably, in favor of the healthy donors). With this in mind, the question arises as to whether or not there should be incentives put into place for people who would decide to give an organ to somebody in need. To answer that question, we should first look at the current allocation of healthy organs that could be easily given, then we will look at how the allocation of those organs would change if we created a legal market for them, and then we will analyze the moral and ethical implications of each of these decisions.

As of 2000, the number of people in Western Europe awaiting a kidney transplant was estimated at 40,000 people, and only a quarter of those people received a transplant (Cooper DKC). This condition relies on people who were otherwise healthy when they died, and on living people who are willing to part with one of their kidneys because of altruistic motivations. Since it has been medically proven that humans can live comfortably with only one kidney, the rationing of kidneys shows a surplus in a vast majority of the population, and a death-inducing shortage among some people.

There is, however, heavy debate on whether or not it would be possible for the organ-transferring process to involve what L. D. de Castro calls “monetary compensation” to the person from whom the organ originates. The overall consensus of those in favor of a system such as this is that the market would be overseen by a public entity, to whom the organs would be sold and then from whom the organs would be distributed (Erin, Charles A.; Harris, John). In the system, Erin and Harris say, “There would be no direct sales or purchases, no exploitation of low income countries and their populations (no buying in Turkey... to sell in [England]). The organs would be tested for HIV, etc., their provenance known, and there would be strict controls and penalties to prevent abuse.” Erin and Harris admit that there would need to be a high enough price point on organs to actually attract people to sell their organs, but maintain that the altruistic nature of donating an organ would not be diminished if people only sold organs in seeking compensation for the act. However, if this method did work to make more people willing to give one of their organs, it would indeed help to greatly diminish the number of people dying for lack of precious organs.
The questions that arise in this hypothetical situation pertaining to the safety and security of opening a market for organs are mostly answered with the notions of careful screening and assigning priority to people according to their need, as opposed to how much they are willing to pay for the organ (this safeguard is an automatic installment of having a public entity through which all transactions are made).

But the questions actually pertaining to the idea that this would become a market are left roughly unanswered, and would be where the moral battleground exists. How would the price point of an organ be decided? Would it be a case-by-case basis, where the quality of the organ is weighed against the demand for it at the time? Would organs being donated by people of rarer blood types be valued at a higher price? Or would an organ be sold for a uniform price, so long as it passed a set of requirements according to the type of organ it is? If people still refused to sell their organs, would the price point shift upward? If the price point continued to shift upward until it reached an exorbitant price, could the government have a solid legal case in being able to have those people who still refused to donate as legally insane, send them to an asylum, and then take the organ on the grounds that they aren’t of a sound mind to decide to donate it on their own?

At the same time, there are severe moral implications on the part of those who currently aren’t donating organs and who physically could without seeing severe side-effects in their daily routine. Proponents of a market for organs argue that the loss of life in the current system is clearly unacceptable, and that “[p]eople have a right to make a decision to sell a body part. If we should be allowed to sell our labour, why not sell the means to do that labour?” (Savulescu).

While there aren’t any easy answers to the questions pertaining to this idea, it is apparent that something needs to be done for those people who have failing organs. However, it is also difficult to reach a conclusion on how a market, and will likely leave the problem unresolved until a modern-day Jonathan Swift comes forth with a modest proposal.

Works Cited

de Castro, L. D. “Commodification and Exploitation: Arguments in Favour of Compensated Organ Donation.” Journal of Medical Ethics. 29 (2003): 142-146.

Cooper, DKC; Lanza, RP. Xeno - the Promise of Transplanting Animal Organs Into Humans. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000: 7-17.

Erin, Charles A. and John Harris. “An Ethical Market in Human Organs.” Journal of Medical Ethics. 29 (2003): 137-138.

Savulescu, J. “Is the Sale of Body Parts Wrong?” Journal of Medical Ethics. 29 (2003): 138-139.

More reveries from slumberland

Today hit me kind of hard. There was the American Government class, which is aksumg me for a debate paper in a week on whether or not the war in Iraq was justified. There was acting, which never really hits me hard, but involved running around today, and I have the cardiovascular capability of a chain-smoking obese 12 year-old (oddly enough, this becomes an invalid when I'm dancing). And then I was hit by German, in which I have an assignment to now hand in late, and an assignment due on Friday, but this is still manageable. Then there's the wonderful hour of today that was macroeconomics. You know you're paying enough for college when you learn two days before the 3-5 page paper is due that you have a 3-5 page paper to write. Yes, I probably should have foreseen this kind ofthing coming, what with my having been at a faculty-excused drama conference the day it was assigned and Septober's natural ability to screw with my perception of what is utter bullcrap, but my life just wouldn't be interesting were it not for the self-inflicted pain I suffer.

But I have evidence to support my belief that this, too, is manageable. The one thing I don't know is manageable or not is something that one would expect to be abundantly manageable: my own body. Notwithstanding the incredible cinnamon-flavored fiber cookies it's had me discover, my GI tract is still my mustachioed enemy in this, the melodrama that is my life (hooray, that came out incredibly emo) (as a courtesy, I now take the time to remind my readers that melodramas are actually comedies). So I am off to the doctor's office tomorrow, that I may hope to bring the resurfaced threesies to an end once and for all.

The funny thing is that when you consider that this is my own body rebelling against me, this, too, is self-inflicted pain. And believe me, you can call TMI as often as you want, it's still not even close hearing it as it is experiencing it firsthand.

Tomorrow might be good. Here's to the night.

Anatomy of a day

7:00 - My alarm goes off, I open and close my cell phone to turn it off.

7:30 - My iMac starts playing my "Songs I generally listen to" playlist. I'm pretty sure it starts with Matchbox Twenty.

9:00 - The second alarm I set for myself goes off. Switchfoot is playing.

9:07 - I finally decide to get up out of bed when "Gone" by Switchfoot starts up.

9:12 - I get to the bathroom. Its dispenser is still out of soap, as it has been for over a week now.

9:30 - I get out of the shower as Chet walks in. He tells me that I should tell an RA or Tolu about the soap.

9:33 - I get my pants on and walk out of the bathroom just as Tolu walks in. I inform him of the soap.

9:35 - I walk back into my room. "Upside Down" by Jack Johnson.

9:37 - I put my contact lenses in and put on deodorant. I shuffle through the shirts in my shirt drawer and pick out the Doane College one. I don't look half bad in orange.

9:40 - Something compels me to update Growl on my iMac. I do so, and then spend a bit of time screwing with its functions.

9:50 - I realize that if I want breakfast today, I need to book it to the coffee shop. I bring my iPod along. "The Remedy" by Jason Mraz.

9:55 - I make it into the Common Grounds in time to get a peanut butter muffin and a mocha blend smoothie. "Kiss From a Rose" by Seal.

10:00 - I get back to the dorms just in time for Scrubs. It's a commercial, so I take the opportunity to get the paper on which this was originally written and my photojournalism book. "Big Yellow Taxi" by Counting Crows.

10:05 - Scrubs is back on. "My Malpractice Decision" and "My Female Trouble."

10:15 - My stomach starts its rebellion again, marking the fourth consecutive day of GI trouble since I added more fiber to my diet.

10:57 - I head to work-study to cover for Jess. On the way out, I discover that sometimes it is just easier to expel things from your mind. Then I reflect on "Loves me, loves me not," and wonder if its accuracy is to be always trusted.

11:03 - I get to the library, and then go to the bathroom.

11:15 - I catch up on what I've been doing today.

11:20 - I help an old man by changing quarters for a dollar.

11:35 - I finish catching up, and start listening to my iPod again.

11:37 - I crack open my photojournalism book to start studying for tonight. "Open Arms" by Journey.

12:35 - I finish chapter one and consider lunch, transferring, and meeting with Jeff. "Here's to the Night" by Eve 6.

12:50 - The next person on duty arrives. Now to lunch. "Into the Ocean" by Blue October.

12:59 - I set my breaded chicken sandwich down next to my sun chips and drink. Immediately, I go to Academic Support to see if I can get a transfer thing going.

1:02 - The woman I need to talk to is in a Safe Space Training seminar. My heart smiles, and I go to get my mail.

1:05 - There's a reminder to help with the blood drive, a packet of the available interterm classes this January, and a form for off-campus cultural events in my box.

1:11 - I finish my sandwich and return the form to the Academic Support desk. The woman I need to talk to is still not back. "Be Yourself" by Audioslave.

1:15 - My iPod reminds me of my meeting with Jeff. Off I go. "Dare You To Move" by Switchfoot.

1:25 - I make a pitstop in my room to drop off my coat, photojournalism book, chips, and mailbox stuffers. I pick up a notebook with a hard cover, and my cell phone. No new calls since I put it on the charger. "Nowhere Near" by Summercamp.

1:30 - I arrive outside of Jeff's door. On the way over, I see a guy running in a bit of a baseball outfit, and am reminded of the assignment in photojournalism I have yet to attempt. "Crazy" by Alanis Morissette.

1:34 - I decide to check up on the news. "Breathe" by Anna Nalick.

1:47 - Jeff comes to talk to me after I've been waiting. The problem is what I thought it would be: American Government. "Hallelujah" by John Cale.

1:52 - Chet comes into the office. I scare him away with my awesome machismo.

1:55 - I leave Jeff's office for Dr. Hill's. He isn't in at the moment, so I remind myself to go down again Wednesday afternoon. "Life is a Highway" by Rascal Flatts.

1:58 - I go to the SLO again to declare my intention to transfer at the semester. "Are You Happy Now?" by Michelle Branch.

1:59 - I run into Dr. Hill outside of the SLO, and walking back to his office, he informs me that my debate paper will schew my grade greatly. He also tells me that my study habits may be lackluster now that I'm not in high school anymore. My idea to have him think I'm a freshman continues to amuse.

2:10 - I leave Dr. Hill's office and get back to my room.

2:13 - I sit at my desk and continue to chronicle.

2:26 - Now to get that sports photo. "Higher Ground" by Red Hot Chili Peppers.

2:38 - I am reminded of the basis behind my passionate hatred of sports and sports photography. The smell of cinnamon reminds me of my cookies. "Yesterdays" by Switchfoot.

2:43 - I run across my fourth student tour of the day. Walking past, I can't help but think what fun it would be to etch "RUN" in red ink on multiple scrawls of paper and leave them where I know touring students would find them.

2:46 - I grab some fiber cookies.

2:58 - I recall the presence of an airport in Crete, and stakeout for skydivers. "Move Along" by All-American Rejects.

3:08 - I snap a photo of two joggers. Not what I had come for, but whatevs. "Someday" by Nickelback.

3:18 - I get back to my room and watch an episode of Avatar before voice seminar. "She Will Be Loved" by Maroon 5.

3:52 - Avatar is still awesome, but now for the seminar.

4:03 - I get to the seminar, which Hannah Jo Smith promises will be short.

4:12 - We get out of the seminar, but not before Hannah Jo frightens my soul to its core.

4:15 - On the way back to the dorm, Tyler tells me about how one of his voice lessons with Hannah Jo was nothing but him exploding over a ton of pent-up emotions, and then crying. I suddenly realize just how strong our will to pretend that we aren't bothered by something can sometimes be, and how unhealthy it is to let those emotions all come out at the same time. Yet we all engage in the act of pretending that things don't get to us. Chekov! How right Chekov was!

4:21 - I start typing an article for American Govt.'s class tomorrow. "Poison Kiss" by The Last Goodnight.

4:49 - I finish typing my article. In printing it out, I run into Aaron Holmes, whom I try to help set up his computer to print from Frees lab. We fail.

5:00 - Aaron, Ben-Kaye, and I go to eat in the caf. We run into other AπEs there and discuss interterm options.

5:35 - I find myself unable to eat another bite of my pizza. Most of the AπEs have left, so I go to get an ice cream cone and sit with Liz, Zach, and Chanel.

5:45 - After regaling Liz and Zach with what happened today, I feel a MIGHTY NEED to use the bathroom once more.

5:50 - I go to the bathroom, but see Ben-Kaye and Aaron playing billiards, and decide to photograph them for my sports assignment.

6:00 - I go to the bathroom. It doesn't feel good.

6:10 - I head back to my room after photographing Aaron and Ben-Kaye at fußball.

6:15 - Off to rehearsal. My stomach is still sick.

6:27 - I get to the Con. I go to the bathroom.

6:54 - I begin getting actual staging in Arabian Nights. I don't have my script on me tonight. I lost it between yesterday and today.

6:59 - I go to photojournalism class. Midterm today. Hoorah.

7:07 - Richard hands out the test to Layne and I.

7:25 - I finish bombing the test.

7:54 - Class is dismissed. I hang out for a second.

9:19 - Rehearsal is done for the night. I go back to my room.

9:30 - I make it back to my room and log onto Adium for the night. I might do my German homework (and by might, I mean should), but today was way too hectic...

Roll to determine nerd

I think I've known this on some level ever since I was playing Super Mario Bros. 3 as early as I had coherent thought, but I'm a bit of a nerd.

I have seriously been playing video games for as long as I can remember. When I was four years old, I had already beaten Bowser (of course, back then he was still King Koopa), and I knew the ins and outs of Frogger about as well as my parents did five months after it was released. I had quite a bit of trouble with Tetris, an affliction that would later manifest itself as a general inability to reason spatially, but on a lot of other games, I was solid.

And I didn't get any less nerdy as the years went by. When I was in fourth grade, I remember always being the first one to raise my hand when my teacher asked us a problem, and I hated showing it work because I could do the numbers so much more quickly in my head. This kind of learning was, of course, frowned upon, and I was never picked to answer a question, nor was I told that I could do numbers in my head. I have no idea if my fourth grade teacher thought that I was brilliant or if I was the dumbest of dumb. All I know is that for whatever reason, she would fight tooth and nail so that she didn't have to call on me.

I did go to enrichment, though. And there I was allowed to remain my nerdy self. We had projects that we were required to do, though. And they weren't fun projects. I remember that I had to so a report on the imports and exports of Yemen (I selected that country based on little more than having heard its name on an episode of Friends, but there I was, making a Powerpoint about it).

When I wasn't doing Powerpointson Yemen or raising my hand and not getting called on, I was playing video games. My fascination with them would later become an idea for a career, around the time I realized that somebody somewhere was making these things. So from around sixth grade to tenth, I wanted to make video games.

The somewhat strong desire to make video games almost immediately left the forefront of my mind when I did my first show onstage, ever. In keeping with the spirit of things, it was "The Hobbit." I didn't have a big part by any means, but it still fueled the flame of my affection for being in front of people, saying a bunch of crap.

When I was a junior, I decided that I wanted to give forensics (speech for those of you who weren't in forensics) a shot. It was basically the same thing as theatre, only in front of people whose eyes you could see, and comprised of speeches that you wrote yourself, and in most cases, delivered by yourself. I very much liked it, but I did not like the format which I would be held to if I intended to continue with it into college.

The tail end of my junior year saw me writing for my high school's newspaper. This was mostly because the newspaper's adviser was abundantly impressed with a letter to the editor I wrote about pep rallies, and she was equally upset that I wasn't on staff any of the other years I had been in high school. This resulted in me taking up journalism for the last year and a half of my high school career.

Going into college, I was sure that I wanted to be in the theatre, and I was equally sure that I would major in theatre and then use my talents to become a voice actor. Then last April, I had the epiphany that I wasn't very likely to make a lot of money in a job with such a heavy emphasis on the use of spatial reasoning. So, I made the decision to take a different road altogether in my career.

Which brings us up to speed on why I am going into journalism now, with hopes of being a reviewer for video games. I still like voicing my opinions on... well, everything. And I am still a teriffic nerd, and I don't see any reason to change that.

But this blog really isn't about jobs. No, it's about things much more important to me than that.

It's about my passions.

I am a nerd, with a love for video games, the Matrix movies, Star Wars, Star Trek, stargazing, writing, theorizing about parallel universes, making poetry, singing songs as loud as I can as often as I can, watching movies on rainy weekends, and dreaming of flying like Superman.

If you don't like it, screw all y'all.

test blog

this is a test to see if this will work as a viable means of sending
posts to my blog or not. The real test comes from determining if I
can exceed this tiny text box and if it will grow to accomodate new
text or not. Whoop... Looks like it doesn't.

The Dance

The night is coming,
My one big chance
Your eyes not taking
A second glance.
That pressing question
My lips won't grant,
"May I take you
Out to the dance?"

The time is rushing,
A steady advance,
While I'm still dreaming
In my mind's romance.
My fear expressing
Through trembling hands,
"May I take you
Out to the dance?"

My stomach is plunging
But my feet hold fast.
On your door I'm knocking;
Corsage with a clasp
But within I hear laughing.
I let a lie pass,
"I hope that he treats you
Well at the dance."

Life's little lessons

As I enjoyed my mostly blogless fall break, I did several things that I don't normally do: first, I videotaped myself trimming my toenails, and second, I revisited the Matrix sequels, two films which I quite enjoy, but haven't watched in well over two years.

While the toenails are a bit harder to explain, the movies are the sum of the remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the Matrix. Plus, I really like them, in spite of what everyone else on Earth thinks of them. Concordantly, I got a rush of nostalgia from watching them, and suddenly remembered a ton of stuff pertaining to the two years before my senior year of high school. Vis-a-vis, forensics, theatre, journalism, mixed chorus, English 11, precalculus, and some other stuff, all rushed back into my mind. But there was a problem: all I could remember of the subjects were bullet points. There was nothing of substance in my memories, no recollection of the events, just the facts that I wrote such and such a column, and that I made it to state, but didn't qualify for finals.

It was some time in the middle of my watching The Matrix Revolutions that I got an email from an old friend of mine, who graduated back in 2004. Actually, he was much more than a friend. He was certainly something that I would call an idol. He was valedictorian of his class, he could act, dance, sing, place in state finals, everything. And it was at that point that I felt, "Wow... There's something behind this."

And so I went for my trademark walk around the cross-country track. I go out there a lot, when I need to think about things that are going on in my life, and this was certainly something. I began talking out loud to myself, concerned primarily about the fact that 2004 was rushing back to me, yet I couldn't remember any of it, and that since it was decidedly the last year before the major life changes began to take place, it held some significance in my current predicament.

And I made some important discoveries on my walk, mostly that it's fun to yell things in a public area while nobody else is around. But the revelation I feel like I was meant to make didn't come until Monday. I had just gotten back to my dorm from lunch, and was watching some of the specials on the second disc of Revolutions when I discovered as I walked to my sink to brush my teeth that my sink was nearly full of rust-infested water. Long story short, some calls were made around, and then the plumber on campus came in to look at my sink, remove the U-bend, stick a snake tube in to remove the obstruction, realize that the obstruction was much further down than he had thought, get a bigger snake tube to go further down, and finally unclog my sink.

It was after all this, as I was brushing my teeth, that I figured out what I was supposed to learn from all this: when you don't like the way something is, change it.

I'm sure that all of you are probably zOMG'ing about that no-duh revelation, but honestly, it wasn't something I had considered before. I was so used to letting myself believe that things in life will happen how they will happen, and that there isn't much that we can do about any of the circumstances we find ourselves in, but there it was, a solution to my sink problem.

And maybe there is merit to try, trying again. As much grief as I gave the concept in one of my earlier posts, the obstruction was cleared after the plumber went and got a different tool.

And I think that's what made me a happier person before my snior year of high school. I didn't accept circumstances as they were, I set out to achieve my goals even if I was afraid to do so. I think that's what I need to do now. I need to fix things that I have problems with, even if it'll take a little work.

Ergo, I hereby rescind any and all times in which I might have said that "this is just how things go."

How far I've come

There are defining moments that we each hit over the years. Events that, however big or small, somehow stick within us as more prominent than the rest of our story. I remember my first day of school as being fairly rainy on the drive down to the strange H-shaped buildings that formed the complex that my first elementary school was. I remember that my bullies' names through the years were Rachel, Justin, Kelley, Molly, Spencer, Spencer, Spencer, and Spencer. I remember that The Lion King had a scene with just a ton of orange on the movie screen.

And as easy as it is to call up some memories, there are other events in my life that I can't remember so well.

Before my junior year of high school, The Matrix Reloaded came out in theaters. And I'd watch that movie so often I could recite something like the first ten or fifteen minutes of it. Remembering that made me think that my junior year was my absolute nerdiest year.

But thinking back on that year, I realized that I actually couldn't remember... nearly any of it. And that freaked me out a bit. Not because I blanked out on an entire year, but because what I do remember of it tells me that it was a pretty good year. I was Le Fou in Beauty and the Beast, I went to state in forensics that year, I... heh, I think that was the year that my friend James managed to get the entire cafeteria to applaud me (though I'm sure a good number of them didn't know that they were applauding me).

And yet, the only reason I remember that last bit is because my friend James reminded me of the event in the first few days of him being here at college. And as for what being in Beauty and the Beast was like... I really can't explain it to you. My forensics stint? I only really remember practicing in front of the class and then not making it to finals at State.

I feel like I should be disturbed. That was arguably the best year I'd ever had, and so much of it is lacking in clarity. And I feel like maybe the reason I can't remember any of it is because of things that came after it. So much happened, in my senior year of high school alone, to reshape what I was then into what I am today. And when I think back on my junior year, I feel like I was so carefree then, so much younger in the sense of my mentality, than now.

If I could physically go back, and see who I was then as I am now, what would I see?

If at first, you don't succeed...

That's the creed that we learned by repitition when we were kids. What we will likely tell our own successors. Try, try again. Because everything in this world can be earned if you fight for it, relentlessly and whole-heartedly.

It's even the theme of one of the stories in Big Fish. The one, ironically, where the main character's father is explaining the courtship of his mother. He takes every opportunity to learn more about her, what she likes, where she lives, what she does. And the son of a gun gets the dame. They get married with the little money that he has, and they live together happily. Not likely ever after, but happily all the same.

When I think about that now, I also think of when I worked on staff at my high school newspaper. Everyone on staff, except for a couple of lucky souls, were editors or co-editors of one section or another. What being an editor entailed was putting together the page layout of your section, deciding what stories would run every month, and the usual reporting slag that everyone on staff had to subject themselves to. After all, we were a newspaper of about 12 workers strong.

And usually things went running pretty smoothly. Sure, it was a grind writing and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting (no joke, four draft minimum). But we did it because there was something to it all that we felt, this was fun to do, and it was worth doing. The people need news.

But there were times when life outside of the newsroom would take over. And it wasn't that we couldn't work on the paper. Rather, we let our stories slide because it felt good to not write up a draft this day or that day. We were all guilty of it at least once, so there isn't anyone who can or should shoulder all of the blame.

Still, when we counted on others to do their share of a section, it was on them. We would do everything we had to in order to get our parts of the final product to the printers, and if they needed help, we were glad to offer (it was our asses on the line, after all).

But when it came right down to it, we had made an agreement that we would split the work. To make deadline, we would all rely on each other.

And putting your hope in somebody else can sometimes lead to a deadline being missed. It's a disappointment to be let down by somebody else, but if you don't make every effort to do everything you can do, the person you should really be disappointed in is yourself.

Others have their own stuff to do. Their own stories to write. If them doing their own thing lets you down now and then, all you can do is make a late deadline, and give the next shot your all.

Choking on my alibis, but it's just the price I pay.

I felt it good to keep in spirit with the song.

So I got a call from the director of the show just now, after scrambling all morning to get my shift covered and to get a ride into Lincoln for the audition, that because I can't attend two of the rehearsals because of a play I'm going to be in on campus this fall, I do not need to audition for the show at all.

Are some people... just born to struggle?

Now they're going to bed, and my stomach is sick.

Weekends, it seems are stacked against me. Around 11:00 last night, I got back to my room to find that my carpet had peed on itself. Now, my first instinct was to say, "Sweet holy crap," or something to that effect. And then I of course went to tell my friends what had happened, but abruptly followed that up with finding an RA to inform. I mean, it's not every day your floor pees on itself. It's something that ought to be checked on to ensure that you only need to walk through it to get into (and out of [and into {and out of (and into)}]) and out of on one night's occasion. So with any luck, that floor will be potty-trained within the span of a few days now.

In the meantime, my colon is either very happy to be doing its job, or so vindictive that it's trying to kill any semblance of comfort that sitting used to afford. I suppose I should be happy if it's happy, but something tells me that that isn't the case.

I'm also in a bit of a pickle with regards to something I thought was a blessing up until last night. See, I was contacted through Facebook about a show that will be running in Lincoln starting January, that pays -- money -- and that is casting this weekend. I wasn't contacted by the director directly, but when I called her and told her who had referred me, she was abundantly excited to have me come and audition for the show. We agreed that I'd come at 3:00 today, and so I set about the process of being excited and hoping that I could find somebody to give me a ride there. And it was roughly an hour after I discovered that my floor can't hold its water that I remembered that I am scheduled to work in the library from 1:00 to 5:00 today. So now the problem extends past simply finding a ride there, but also to finding people to cover at least three hours of my shift. This one falls under "by the grace of Jesus" that it'll happen, if it happens.

But nothing compares to finding out that "Someone That You're With" by Nickelback perfectly summarizes that feeling in the pit of your stomach. And there's a part of me that's angry, and a part of me that's nervous, and another part of me that wants to explode into beautiful lyrics and poetry, like this:

My body is timid
And my fortune is trifling
And my home is tiny
And my accomplishments are temporary

But my mind is a tower
And my emotions are a torrent
And my life is a tapestry
And my heart is a tree

And you... are my most-sought treasure.

I thought of that today, and I don't pretend to be a poet. Or a lyricist. But they say that when you're overcome with a powerful emotion such as love, you find the strength to do extraordinary things, like lift a car off of your child, or overcome the flames in a burning building and rescue them before the place comes down on the both of you. I guess that since I don't have any real strength over anyone, other than the way I view the world (the only thing I truly consider special about myself), I end up being able to weave words together... for an audience that is unlikely to ever hear them.

How the hell did Shakespeare find a woman AND a man to love him?

Blogging from bed

I'm sitting in front of my computer, typing this out on my iPod, not because it's fun to do so (though it is pretty fun), but rather because my computer can't connect to the internet and my iPod can. Oh, there goes the internet on my computer.

Okay, now I'm on my bed. Typing this out on my iPod. And this thing is just amazing. It holds all of my music (that I listen to), most of my movies (which I can swap out when I feel so inclined), and more amazingly, I'm typing this blog out on it. I'm logged on to the Internet with my iPod (which knows what I meant to type when I accidentally hit a wrong button or two on its keyboard.

But that I'd only a pre-tangent to what I want to write about today. See, I was listening to my music after classes this morning, and I don't think it's uncommon to feel like your music know how you feel and finds the appropriate songs to bolster whatever feeling you're ... well, feeling.

My iPod takes it a step further, and seems to predict what I'm about to feel (just like it predicts what I'm about to type). Let me run down the situation: I frequently listen to this thing now that I have it, and lemme get this out of the way, I don't have that many love songs. At all. I'd say most of my music is general rock affair, with maybe an eighth of it being love songs. I also have roughly 500 songs on here. An eighth of 500 is 62, which I just figured out on this thing's calculator.

Of that, it seems that this thing knows when I'm ABOUT to run into somebody I like. Because it'll start playing an appropriate song before we even cross each other's paths.

And this is another one of those mysteries of life that I just have no clue as to what I'm supposed to make of this. Is this God? Is this Satan? Is this just my imagination or mind or heart or whatever department it is that handles this kind of thing in my body? Who is playing this joke on me, and for what audience?

And more importantly, what do I do? I've already made a move, way back ago, and it didn't end well. So my natural instinct is to just let this all slide and forget that it ever happened (happens). But what if that's the wrong move? Would I know what an idiot I was? Or would by hoping that things can move forward and making the same move twice would I be made all the bigger a fool for not realizing my folly the first time?

I say this now to represent my despair: Grah.

And now, iPod.

After a bit of unhealthy obsessing over the fact that this puppy was soon to be in my posession, it's finally here. And it is pretty darn cool. I'm typing this blog out on it, thanks to Safari and the built-in wireless module in it. So overall, this was worth the wait (ooh, it's correcting my spelling and predicting what I'll type next).

I think a lot of times, we want something too fervently, and it slips out of our possession without us even realizing that it's gone. I can attest to finding out that something has left me before I even realized that it was gone, and the realization that it's gone can sting. A lot. We can also wish that we had something so much that when we finally get it, the magic has all been spent in the anticipation. But the real thing about wanting stuff is that it's bound to happen. It doesn't take a psychologist to tell you that people want stuff. But when you try and downplay your desire for something... Well, that can be just as dangerous as wanting it too much.

Bottom line is that you can spend all of your energy on your will to have something, without even realizing that you're slowly killing the excitement for when it finally does arrive. But I think it's better to at least acknowledge the fact that you want something.

If you're honest about wanting something, them you can safely say that you over-hyped what you were waiting for, but if you downplay the value of something in your own mind, you might just miss something spectacular when it does come along

Drowsy musings

I was with my friend Andrew in the campus coffee shop earlier today, looking at the various options I had for cold drinks. I was thirsty, you see, and delicious as coffee is, I just didn't feel like downing a hot one on a warm fall day (in spite of the fact that it's over 80 degrees outside, I want my readers to acknowledge that it has, in fact, been fall since September 22).

So I saw the Aquafina and the water and the smoothie list, and noticed that Aquafina costs $1.25 where water costs $1.00. Thinking that I had missed the day where Aquafina stopped being water, I looked at the drink case and saw that the Aquafina was all of the flavor splash variety. Well, that explained it, I thought, but Andrew told me that he sees Aquafina as pure evil.

And somehow this brought us to the topic of parallel universes. I believe the train of thought went something like this: why the hate toward Aquafina, did Aquafina kill his dad, maybe in a parallel universe.

Yes. That's it.

And so my wonderings were fixed on parallel universes. It's incredible, that when we say to ourselves "anything's possible," we don't really mean it, because we believe that there's a certain amount of rationality to anything in the universe, even those things that seem completely irrational. In a parallel universe, I am equivalent to this universe's Indiana Jones. And I'm probably fighting the evil corporation of Aquafina for killing Andrew's dad.

Or maybe I'm actually the operative from Aquafina that killed Andrew's dad. My conscience is unphased by this act, which the me that's typing this is completely against, and I'm setting traps for the unassuming Andrew to fall into. Or we could look at a different universe where Andrew knows that I'm laying traps for him, and he eventually makes it to where I am and kills me. Gosh, that'd suck.

I'm sure there are plenty of parallel universes where I'm a homeless guy, too. Maybe there are a handful where I dance and sing for food on some corner in New York because I couldn't make it as a line dancer and that was my lifelong dream. In that other universe.

On the same token, there have to be plenty of universes (much like this one) where I'm just this normal guy who isn't Indiana Jones, or an incredibly powerful businessman, or a hobo. And I'm just trying to find my way in life. Maybe I'm happier. Maybe I'm not happier. One of the bitter ironies, of course, would be that in some other universe, I might have everything that I want in this universe, and still not be happy. Or it would actually be making me unhappy.

The really tricky thing about thinking in terms of infinite universes is that just because there are infinite opportunities for something to happen... doesn't necessarily mean that it actually ever does. Are there some factors of existence that are true in absolutely every reality? By that same token, are there some things in all of existence that have absolute no chance of happening?

Are there some things, some people, some places, some events, that are completely unique, only seen just one single time, in one universe, in one instance, for one little blip of eternity?

The more important question is... how do we react when we experience those things that will never be seen by anybody else, ever, in this or any other existence?

My iPod's been Shanghaied

Literally. It's been shipped from Shanghai today. This is possibly the worst piece of news I could get this week.  Muuh...

Goodness, I feel miserable.

My feeling miserable has nothing to do with that.  I just like it for its stupidity.

No, I feel terrible because I have a headache, I'm having hot flashes (which the hoodie seems to have a dissipating effect on, ironically), and I had threesies on the toilet five times today.  I know, it's an uncomfortable thought, but more uncomfortable is having to deal with it.

I went to the doctor's office today, for three reasons: first, my toenail, which was ingrown at the end of last semester, cut out, and is now growing in... ingrown.  Second, the threesies.  And third, these incredibly frequent bouts of dizziness I've been having recently, which have usually been accompanied by a headache in some region of my skull, and was disturbingly close to my brain stem yesterday.  The doctor gave me a prescription for antibiotics for the toenail, and told me that the dizziness couldn't be resolved until we got the toenail and the threesies under control.  I feel like that makes sense, since an infection can affect every part of your body, and dehydration can lead to a vast array of noggin-related symptoms.  So tomorrow I go to get that prescription filled out, and I get everything else straightened out, too.

Oh, and my iPod had better be here, if FedEx knows what's good for it.

Nobody likes reporters.

News and revelations have a very interesting paradigm all their own.  It's strange, being on the receiving end of bad news.  I really like how Lemony Snicket put it when he compared it to climbing a staircase in complete darkness:  Your foot reaches for one more step than there actually is, and there's a sickly feeling of dark surprise as your foot plunges through the air.

Mr. Snicket was, of course, referring to the death of a loved one, but I feel that in my experience the same sensation is experienced from many other kinds of news, not necessarily even pertaining to loved ones.  Maybe you come home one day to find that your house has been robbed, or the check you sent to last month's electric bill bounced.  Maybe you receive an e-mail that very quickly thrusts five very large tasks at you, all of which require your immediate attention.  Maybe you turn on the TV one day and see reporters saying that they believe the gunshot came from the Texas School Book Depository, or that the second plane hit within the same hour as the first.

Regardless of the details, sometimes the sheer instant nature of news makes it feel like it's hitting you harder than any bus ever could.  We often refer to such news as "life-changing."  We're absolutely sure that this new tidbit of information is going to alter how we see and act forever.

I think the bigger news, though, is something that nobody ever really tells you: most of the big, life-changing news we hear... usually only ever affects 5% of our life, and that is a generous yield on my part.  Yes, being robbed sucks, but how much of "I'll never feel safe in my own home again" is just feeling?  When we find out about bad stuff, and when there's still a bit of light on the subject, I think we attribute too much feeling to our shellshock.  And that can really be a dangerous motivation for your actions.  It rushes you into decisions you might not have made if you just never heard the news to begin with.  And a few weeks down the road, what's going to have the bigger sting: the old news, or the decision you pushed on yourself?

September 26th... happy anniversary.

Today pretty much rocks.

Last night, I got an email from UNL on the subject of transferring and enrolling. Well, the email was mostly about the Math Placement Exam I need to take at the New Student Enrollment day I'll be attending, but it did catch my intrigue, being the first time I heard news of even needing to attend a New Student Enrollment day. So I did some digging on the subject, and it turns out that in preparation for one of the four dates they have for new students to enroll (10/19/2007, 11/16/2007 12/14/2007, and 1/10/2008), I need to pay them $150 and $10 for each guest on this enrollment day, decide on 6 or 7 courses I would like to register for, fill out a health profile that describes my immunizations and such, and take the aforementioned Math Placement Exam. This is funtime, because it means that I'm very likely to need still more math credits once I get to UNL, and I have no clue what classes I'll need to take, nor do I have any idea what my immunization record is like. The upshot of this is that I'm going to be missing class on the 19th.

In other news, I sent a second email to Fred #6, who sent the previous reply to me, calling me a little girl. That message, and the correspondence henceforth, can be seen here. It feels as though that might be the last I hear from Fred #6 regarding my question about the Minneapolis bridge, but it was a good test of my argumentative skills, and of my patience with difficult people. Yeay.

More glorious than that, though, is the news that my iPod Touch, originally thought to be shipping from a warehouse on Friday and arriving here next Tuesday, has in fact shipped this Tuesday and is set to arrive here this Friday.

I was so excited at the news of this, that I ran to the Perry so that I could tell somebody. I didn't run into anybody who knew how eagerly I was anticipating this baby's delivery, but rest assured the labor had me gasping for a good long time after the fact.

And so now we come to this afternoon, in which it would behoove me to both exercise and to read the news on my Wii. The exercise is important because I need to exercise, and the news-reading is really only for my photojournalism and American Government classes. I don't think anybody ever gets any real benefit from reading the news.

Fred #6 and Me

Fred #6

Hello little girl. Do your parents know you're playing on the computer?

Every calamity in this land today is a direct result of the proud arrogant sin of this doomed fag-enabling nation. But then you already knew that.

The more important thing to know about all bridges and all highways in Doomed & Perverted america is this: They exist for one reason, and one reason only, to wit, so the saints of God can travel them to bring to the eyes and ears of this entire land GOD HATES AMERICA, AMERICA IS DOOMED, GOD IS YOUR TERRORIST, and similar prophesies. The very instant we are done with that job, this place is going to melt with a fervent heat, every bridge and highway will crumble or dissolve before your eyes, and all you little smartalecks will be looking for a place to hide. It'll be too late then.

No one will be able to stand before the White Throne who lived in Our Day and claim they didn't hear the words. On a very rare occasion our message will reach the heart of one of God's little sheep, and they will rejoice and be healed. The rest of this dark-hearted land will become furious, and be hardened in their resolve against the King. By that means, the highways and bridges are an important instrument in condemning every Doomed american -- including you.

As for keeping your "family" healthy, that's an easy one Jughead Josh -- OBEY GOD! See how nicely that works? :-) Magormissabib.

My Reply

Yeah, my parents know I'm on my computer. It doesn't bother them, seeing as I bought it with my graduation money and am an adult.

And I know this might be one of those sugar-coated liespeaks you openly hate, but it's my belief that everything in this world happens for a reason, be it that God wants us to learn from our pain or that he wants us to be happy in our successes. I can only hope that holding this belief doesn't mean I'm going to Hell.

And this was a really long next paragraph of yours, but I think the gist of it is that the Minnesota Bridge collapsed because you were done with it? And that grieving families can legally file lawsuits against you because you're accepting the blame?

Also, how can the bridges first crumble and then be an instrument in condemning us? Isn't that a bit like having your cake, and eating it too?

Oh, and so "no" to the multivitamins?

Thanks,
Josh

Fred #6

You are so foolish. You really think this is about you. Stop all that psychobabble, get a Bible and read it. You are acting like a 3-year-old on matters pertaining to your never-dying soul. You've demonstrated yourself to be a base lass. You have access to all our words, so you must go into the delete column. You have enough intellect -- which God gave you, you fool, you didn't generate it yourself -- so that you will be without excuse. Now get over yourself, get a Bible, read it, obey it, and through all that process close your mouth firmly shut. Magormissabib.

Me again

You like to make what are called "strawman arguments," in which you make the claim that somebody has a stance that they actually make no indication of having at all. You also like to call people names, which I could say is mudslinging, but I can predict that your argument in that case would be along the lines of "You're already so covered in mud by your own sin that I couldn't possibly make you any dirtier;" instead, I'll relegate you to your own comment about me acting like a three year-old and ask, which of the two of us has already called the other four names?

And as far as the Bible goes, I really like when Moses compared the universe to a tapestry, and God to the tapestry-weaver, and all of us as the individual threads in the tapestry. The message there really stuck with me and got me through some hard times. As did the message of Ecclesiastes, that there's a time for everything in this world, be it joy (like when a baby is born into the world) or grief (like, say, when a bridge collapses). See, some things in this world aren't necessarily punishment for things that we've done, and that isn't made up. Just look at Job: Blameless in the eyes of the Lord, and yet he had everything taken from him.

And true, God never says that he himself loves everybody, but what did Jesus say were the two most important commandments for humanity to keep? I know that God can do whatever he wants (of course, Hank Hanegraaff makes the scripturally-supported argument that there are three things that God can not do), but should we as people not obey the commandments, especially those that the Christ tells us are the two most important?

Josh

My love affair with the Westboro Baptist Church

Found in a publication by the Westboro Baptist Church (?)

In response to this...

Dear Shirley, Margie, Fred #6 or Fred #7 (The four bloggers on www.godhatesfags.com),

Do all bridges that fall do so because of homosexuality, or just the Minneapolis bridge? Also, I'm looking for an economic way to keep my family healthy. Do you recommend multivitamins or condemnation of homosexuals?

Josh

Their response to me:

Hello little girl. Do your parents know you're playing on the computer?

Every calamity in this land today is a direct result of the proud arrogant sin of this doomed fag-enabling nation. But then you already knew that.

The more important thing to know about all bridges and all highways in Doomed & Perverted america is this: They exist for one reason, and one reason only, to wit, so the saints of God can travel them to bring to the eyes and ears of this entire land GOD HATES AMERICA, AMERICA IS DOOMED, GOD IS YOUR TERRORIST, and similar prophesies. The very instant we are done with that job, this place is going to melt with a fervent heat, every bridge and highway will crumble or dissolve before your eyes, and all you little smartalecks will be looking for a place to hide. It'll be too late then.

No one will be able to stand before the White Throne who lived in Our Day and claim they didn't hear the words. On a very rare occasion our message will reach the heart of one of God's little sheep, and they will rejoice and be healed. The rest of this dark-hearted land will become furious, and be hardened in their resolve against the King. By that means, the highways and bridges are an important instrument in condemning every Doomed american --
including you.

As for keeping your "family" healthy, that's an easy one Jughead Josh -- OBEY GOD! See how nicely that works? :-)

Magormissabib.

From this, I draw seven (and therefore holy) revelations:

1) Girls now have penises.
2) Structural instability in modern engineering is not the product of faulty materials or wear-and-tear. Rather, we can all do our part in keeping things from breaking by not touching ourselves at night.
3) The highway and interstate system of America was never intended for quick deployment of our military in the event of an attack on our soil, much to Eisenhower's chagrin.
4) The Minnesota bridge collapsed because Westboro Baptist Church was done using it.
5) Sarcasm has no place in the Kingdom of God.
6) The highways will rise against us when they become self-aware.
7) No on the multivitamins.

It's not every day you have a day this bad.

I'm currently sitting in work-study and listening to Switchfoot (I finally got The Beautiful Letdown after turning 20, meaning that I now have all six studio albums Switchfoot's released so far). Funny story about listening to Switchfoot. As I was doing so, a girl asked me for help, which prompted me to get up, and since my MP3 player was in my lap, it hit the ground with a very satisfying thud.

I would be doing something more productive than listening to music today. It was my plan to do so since I woke up. But when I started to look for my backpack earlier this afternoon, I realized that it wasn't in my room. Which means that it's in one of infinite places that aren't my room. Hopefully, though, the thing and the $200 worth of textbooks inside it are safely in the Student Leadership Office (which happens to be closed on Sundays) or in the last classroom I had it (which happens to be locked on days when there isn't a class in it). Either way, I'm very certainly not going to get my homework done for my gauntlet tomorrow.

Speaking of homework, I also have a "portrait" due in photojournalism tomorrow night. To clarify what a portrait is, it's a photograph of somebody which tells a story of some important facet of their persona. It was my idea that I would go down to the local thrift shop and get a shot of the woman who runs the place. She seems like a nice old lady, and plus I got a kickin' Hamtaro lunchbox from that place for only a quarter... You'll never guess what's closed on Sundays. Go on, guess.

And I'm not complaining, but does anyone else ever talk to somebody online and then get a phone call from them, without having a clue as to how your number made it into their posession?

Oh, the decision of whether I get my iPod Touch now or in October has also been made for me: Best Buy is out of them, and there's very little way in Heck I'm going to ask somebody to drive me to Omaha so that I can make a $318 purchase. I know that it's selfish to be bitter about something like this, but jeez... I really wanted this iPod, you know?

I think that just about the only thing I can take solace in this weekend is the fact that I'm on the cusp of finishing writing a song, which will mean that I've written three songs since February. Unfortunately, this is a bittersweet piece of news in and of itself, as it seems like the only time I can really write a song is when I'm experiencing unrequited love, and anybody who's fallen head-over-heels (isn't the head... generally over the heels?) for somebody else can tell you that it's just agony trying to keep all of the feelings inside (hence the songwriting), and not knowing what steps you can possibly take in order to make yourself clear. Worse still... is when you make yourself clear, and you're told that it isn't the right time for them to be in a relationship. Incidentally, this plays into Linger, by The Cranberries (my Switchfoot wrapped up a little bit before writing this half of this paragraph.

You know I'm such a fool for you
You've got me wrapped around your finger
Do you have to let it linger?

Man, does it suck. Why is it that some things can't have definition? Why do we have to wait for things to take shape? Why am I getting stalker-like phone calls? Why is my backpack going to be locked in a room until it's too late for me to do my homework? Why do I space out and drop my MP3 player on the floor?

September... just sucks.