End-of-the-year update

I haven't made an earnest post in a while, so here goes everything that's been up in the past buncha days.

I haven't been busy. Contrary to my constant lack of time, I've actually had very little to do since mid-November. With the exception of one or two papers for classes (notably, modern drama), I've had a blissful amount of free time. I think most of that time ended up being devoured by Adium. Maybe part of my New Year's resolution should be to cut back on instant messengers. I've definitely noticed a drop in productivity since I've started using them nonstop, even when I don't have much to write to anybody. To exemplify: I used to make blog posts.

I made the conscious effort to have weekly updates to my vlog since the beginning of this semester. As can be plainly seen, those efforts were fruitless. I now have 67 episodes posted in the span of, oh... a year and eight months now. I don't even really know how much longer I'm gonna carry the thing. It doesn't seem to have all that many viewers, and the reason I made it in the first place feels like it's gotten severely muddled in these 20 months.

Over Thanksgiving break, we went up to Racine to see my mom's side of the family. The drive was nightmarishly long, as always. But we got to see the family, which was nice, and Grandma and Grandpa's new dogs are incredibly friendly, so it was a good time.

I had lost my main set of car keys back at the end of November. The last place I had taken them out was inside Blockbuster, but I had also been in my friends' room before I realized they were missing. I went to Blockbuster the next day to see if anyone found them, but nobody had. I also asked my friends if they were in there, several times, but to no avail. The day I was heading home for the break, I got a call from Matt saying that he was throwing away an old newspaper and he heard it jingle. He thought to himself, "newspapers don't jingle," and he opened up the paper and found my keys. I picked them up from his place once I had my car all loaded for the trip home.

On the love scene... things are frozen until the semester starts again, which is in another twelve days. I've had more than enough time to reflect on all of what's been said thus far, and (probably to my detriment) so has my crush. The whole thing was an interesting series of events, to be sure.

I still hate ice. So much so that I'm holding back swears right now.

I got my grade reports once I got back home. Three A's, a B-, and a C+ spell a 3.4 GPA for the semester. Still pretty darn good, considering what I'd used to be getting at Doane. I had a lot of blood pressure going over the C+, though. The first day after it had been recorded, my official grades were showing me having earned 0 credit hours for the class. Since that professor had said that anything above a C would be for credit... well, you get it.

Christmas went pretty well, overall. I got my brother the Fall/Winter EP by Jon Foreman, my sister the soundtrack to Songs For a New World, my dad Michael Chrichton's Next, my mom The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (the "wonderful" denotes that this is the book, not the movie), and my brother's wife a Klonoa game for the Game Boy Advance. I got an Xbox 360, a couple of shirts, Left 4 Dead for the PC, season two of The Office, and the first two seasons of 3rd Rock From the Sun on DVD. My dad's parents got me a new wallet, but it unfortunately doesn't have the same card flap thingy that my current wallet has. I keep a bunch of miscellaneous cards in that flap thingy, so I rank it as pretty important, but my current wallet is getting rather floppy from too much existing. I'm gonna keep using my current wallet for as long as I can, then switch over.

I think my New Year's resolution this time around is going to be for me to be more patient with people, and to do my best to be more friendly to everyone. I can safely say that this will be tough, but I kind of thought resolutions were supposed to be tough. God knows, I failed at staying sane this year, and that was my last resolution. But yeah.

I'm registered for classes now. I'm taking a 400-level this semester, which should be... insightful, but the good news is that I have my insane power walk from Andersen to Oldfather yet again. I also need to look at jobs at the temp agency. And browse Husker Hire Link. And give away more information about who I am and where I live.

Yeah, 2009... it sure is gonna be... something.

My gamercard...

Let me show you it.

Best kiss ever

The lines illustrate the colliding of their jaws.

A slow degeneration into tacky

Sprucing will assuredly be upped soon. Just as soon as I'm done with my modern drama paper. I feel almost as if this detracts people from coming over.

Slammed

Something here I wrote a little while back...

I wake up halfway
In a half of a full bed.
The half-drawn blinds
Send half of the sun's rays
Streaming, piercing
The half-dark corners
Of my half-open eyes.
I half-heartedly listen
To half of the words
Of half of my professors
(because I can't even pretend to care
about the other half).

And while half of me is moving on
The other half is STILL
Indivisibly, inextricably
Caught in the memories you chained
Over, around, and through my mind,
Like a boa constrictor on acid
Constraining the breaths
And commanding my thoughts
So that I have as much a chance
As an obsessive compulsive
Anal retentive slam poet does at making a point...
At moving on.

And maybe the worst part of all of this
Is that I don't know whether you
know or don't know
How no matter how far I walk away
Or how high I find myself on any given day,
If I were in the land of milk and honey,
Angels descending from the heavens,
Half blaring trumpets
And half strumming harps
You could still yank my brain out
Through my ears
With one tug on my phone line.
If you know, then you're a bastard,
And if you don't know,
How the Hell Could You NOT Know?

You were the one who made me care,
You were the one who told me not to let go,
You were the one who moved away from me in certainty,
And who moved toward me in fear.

And I keep telling myself,
OVER and over that this isn’t how it should be,
That I have to break free,
That the chains around my mind
Are nowhere but in my mind,
That the worst I could do by letting go
Is reclaim and repair and re-mend
The tissue that YOU tore
Every day you called
And every night you didn’t.

But if you look past my logic,
Quiet the flood of the free-flowing frenzy,
And look only to the shouts...
I’m

I'm gonna see 'em all...

Richards Hall

Math Building

Behlen Labs

501 Building

Architectural Hall

Brace Labs

Ferguson Hall

Woods Building

Kimball

Westbrook

Love Library

I'm bringing a camera and plan on taking photographs of the cooler things I find within their walls.

Subject line:

Have you ever realized how email programs, blogs, and basically anything with a box for a body of text has a subject line above that field? I'm starting to question the nature of that. What if we don't know exactly what we're going to write? How do we name the work as a whole? Most often, I just end up putting something generic, like "hi" or "thoughts". But that's pretty lame, even when you don't stop to consider it.

So I've been doing things differently recently. Instead of fudging around for something clever but still broad enough to cover anything I might write, I've been filling that big box with my content, then deciding how I'll label it.

It's interesting how we try to pigeonhole these things into certain categories before we even start work on them. You can ask any kid what they want to be when they grow up, and they'll likely have and answer for you. When you look back in on their lives later on, how many do you think do what they say they were going to back when you first posed that question to them?

And yet they still tried to predict where they'd be. Maybe they did what they could to predict where they were going to live, how their house would look. Maybe they decided they were going to have three kids. Maybe they decided they were going to marry a doctor, or the sexy nurse. And maybe the next day, they played their first video game and were so awestruck that they decided they wanted to make video games. Screw the plans they laid out before.

And like that, the categories they had all set up for their life have changed in an instant. Or maybe it wasn't an instant, maybe it was a gradual decision to rearrange their life, but they still end up in different slots after a little bit of time. And then the old things they believed in are completely gone, never to be more than a faint echo of laughter on the back of their minds. How silly it was, a future like that. How silly, given the present. Now our futures are so much more clear cut than back then.

Or are they? I may be dead tomorrow. I may win the lottery tomorrow. I may get struck with the inspiration to write some fantastic triumph of independent poetry tomorrow. Or maybe I just get diarrhea and add Immodium to my grocery list. There goes another $3.

The one thing I've learned about life is that I know absolutely nothing about how anything is going to pan out. Not in a day, not in the next two seconds. There are times when I can make predictions with a great deal of certainty, especially in the video game industry, but that's about it.

And somehow, when I think I've mastered the minutia, something always jars me. rarely in a way I would expect, never in a way I would have hoped. Sometimes it's a good thing, sometimes it's a bad thing.

But I never label it as either until I've seen the consequences of it pan out.

Frustration

In my new world order, I'm going to kill the ones who don't realize I'm being sarcastic when I say I'm going to kill the ones who don't realize I'm being sarcastic.

Evernote

I have downloaded a program called Evernote to my Mac and my iPod. It promises to unify your notes by storing them on a server and then pulling them down wherever you are via either an onboard client or by an HTML connection. It might just supplant Notes on my iPod as my main writing blogging tool.

Anyway, a unified platform is good. It ensures that anything I write will be with me wherever I go. Of course, as long as I keep the uploads under 40 MB a month.

Diagram of a Vis Lit assignment

GQ magazine cover step one:


Get the photo taken.

GQ magazine cover step two:


Get a magazine cover to rip elements from.



GQ magazine cover step three:


Merge the elements.

GQ magazine cover step four: find a similar font to the one on the cover. Find this instead:



GQ magazine cover step five:


Lose all sense of intelligent reasoning.

mini-thought

When I was in elementary school, we'd always play Heads Up, Seven Up when the teacher ran out of real stuff for us to do. In hindsight, people guessed pretty accurately when I touched their thumb.

I wonder how they always knew it was me.

It needs a name...

Its last name was Carla, as per the commandeering of my mom, but I consider that to be too spicy of a name for a car so... beige. I want something that fits, but that simultaneously doesn't sound gay.

The gauntlet has been thrown down. Suggestions NOW!

More loving family matters

I'm awake, checking my email and reading some of the articles on C|NET and IGN. Madden '09 looks pretty cool, and apparently there's an Internet security application being offered for free by ZoneAlarm for today only. The ZoneAlarm product has an ad attached to it that looks oddly familiar. Suddenly, I realize that I'm freakishly hungry, and so I close Safari and head downstairs to get some Cookie Crisp.

Unbeknownst to me, there was about to be a convergence of three unrelated events: My dad was heading up to the family computer, I was heading down to the kitchen, and some guy was coming up to our front door. My dad and I reached the foot of the stairs at the same time random guy got to the door.

Coincidence? My dad thinks not! As the dogs bark like idiots, my dad stands in my way, stares at me, and throws, "Expecting somebody?" at me.

What I should have said as I walked into the kitchen: "Yeah. Could you check and see if that's my meth and porn shipment?"
What I actually said as I walked into the kitchen: "No."

I poured myself a bowl of Cookie Crisp, and got myself a spoon. When my dad gets back downstairs, I ask him, "How would I have known that anybody was at the door?" He responds with, "I don't know. Called?" "Nope. I just came down to get some cereal."

Just four more days, just four more days, just four more days...

Why I'd still use Creative products if I were on Windows

You can't deny it. This thing is beautiful in a way that completely defies the current trend of so-called one-piece construction. It's instantly eye-popping and has features that take it beyond the iPod Nano, including a built-in speaker, built-in microphone and built-in radio. The 4 GB model will run you $79.99, which is just a little over half of what a 4 GB Nano would run you.

More features and a boldly different design for half the price. Creative Labs clearly wants to shake things up.

Dreams

Any interpretations on this one would be appreciated.

Two nights ago, I dreamt that I was with my mom's relatives, and we were getting ready to go to this safari park. It was morning, so I hadn't showered by this point, so I go toward the bathroom and the door is open. Unfortunately for me, that doesn't mean that my cousin Paul isn't in there. He apparently didn't feel like closing the door before he got on the toilet. After deciding not to shower after all, I walk into the kitchen to find the world's smallest hamster, able to fit on a single finger. As it turns out, the incredibly tiny fluff ball is also great at climbing. When I set it down it began to vertically scale linoleum tile.

Then we go to the safari, which happens to also be an archery range. Most of the archers seem to be terrible at the sport, as arrows are flying and landing everywhere. We walk through the park (it's a lot more like a park than a jungle or savannah) and finally come to a point where across a lake and through a thicket, we can see this pack of giant moose. They're each at least two stories tall, and they're just grazing. Suddenly, from our right, an even bigger muskrat - no smaller than three stories tall - runs up and starts barking at the giant moose. I start feeling my pockets for my camera, then realize that I don't have it and I turn to the people behind me and ask them if they have it. Turns out somebody does, and they hand it back to me, upset about the fact that their own camera got lost. I promise the guy that I'll email him all the photos, and then another guy says that that won't be necessary and hands the both of us 6 GB compact flash cards. I have no clue what to do with this, since my camera takes SD cards. Then we continue to walk into a more science lab setting, and everyone begins to sing a patriotic song I've never heard before (this happens to me in dreams sometimes. I'll hear music I've never heard before) and at one point in the song everyone stops walking and just hugs the nearest person. I reach out for somebody, but everyone's already hugging somebody else.

Then the bell rings and it's time for me to go to my biochem class. The professor is at the board writing down everyone's name for the first day of class, and he tells us that if at any time we find the course too daunting, we can get up, walk to our name, cross it off, and write the time at which we left the class. He launches questions at us, and puts regulations on where we can sit based on how likely we are to help others figure out the answers to things in class. I need this class, because I only have 15 credit hours and dropping it would put my full-time student status in jeopardy, so I resolve to do well in it. At the end of the class, we start watching a video of people bowling in their swimming suits, which is somehow supposed to illustrate the differences in genetic disposition toward body types.

Suggestions as to what this might mean?

Recent Weeks

I went to bed before midnight on the 13th because I knew that it would be easier to avoid eating that way. That didn't make sleeping that night any easier, though; maybe it was the idea that I was having surgery the next day, maybe it was simple insomnia (I seem to be having a lot of that this summer) or maybe it was secret government radio waves beaming directly into my head the best hits of the '60s, '70s and '80s, I'll never know. The point is that I didn't sleep too well that night.

My splenectomy was scheduled for 10:30 on Monday, which meant that we had to arrive at the hospital around 8:30. Thanks to the aforementioned uneasy sleep, it wasn't a problem waking up early enough to make this happen. The waiting room was agonizing thanks in large part to the incredibly loud TV blasting The Early Show into every corner of the room. There was a competition to see who could best sing the Star-Spangled Banner and everyone who was competing (at least when we got there) made me wish I could leap out of my skin and just lay on the floor in a heap of organ, tissue and bone.

When we were finally taken into the pre-op area, I stripped out of my clothes and into a gown that felt suspiciously like paper. I didn't really want the TV on, but my dad insisted to watch something, so instead of ESPN I opted for MADtv. I would have honestly rather watched nothing, but it wasn't that kind of deal. Various nurses, specialists, and needles came in to prod me with questions, thermometers, names, blood pressure thingies and blood samples, but I saw the surgeon at noon sharp. I don't remember being wheeled to the OR, or even being in the OR at all except for the anesthesia mask they put on me. The next hazy memory I have was drowsily speaking to somebody as they inserted my catheter, and then I was in my recovery room.

The basic timeline escapes me, but the important things went like this: Monday was the most uncomfortable day for me because I still had a lot of gas in my torso from the surgery. I was given a morphine drip, but the amount I could administer for myself was generally too small to make an impact on the pain in my stomach. Late that night, I finally couldn't stand the pain any longer and I asked a nurse to let me up so that I could walk around my bed for a bit. Either that or the pain pill she gave me helped a lot. Recovery was basically that same run-around over and over: pain pills, getting up to walk around from time to time, and struggling to eat. I would have left the hospital on Tuesday or Wednesday, but the doctors were concerned about how low my hemoglobin count was, and up until I was released it was looking more and more likely that I'd need a transfusion. Fortunately, that didn't happen.

While I was in the hospital, my parents visited every day. That wasn't really too comforting or helpful to me, since they would simply do their own thing and I would either sleep or watch TV. I guess we didn't really have anything to say. My brother was a different story, though. He came to visit me on the first night along with Melissa, then again on the second night which is when they brought me Batman: Gotham Knight on DVD (a collection of animé shorts which I highly recommend to any fans of Batman or of animé), but Melissa was getting a migraine that night, so my brother came back a couple nights later and we watched the DVD together then.

I had vowed not to miss an episode of Avatar that week, because it was Nickelodeon's big push to the end of the series. Every night at 7:00, I had my TV on, and when I got out of the hospital on Friday I still watched it. By the end of the series on Saturday, I felt so amazed at the shape the TV show had taken: from being another action show three years ago to developing a strong, complicated plot where everybody had ambition and purpose behind what they were doing. Every time something like that happens, I go back in my mind to how things were when it began. I was a senior in high school... even in the pain of that year, things seemed a lot simpler back then.

The following week was painful. I still wasn't able to eat very well, and sleep only came to me in bursts when I took a hydrocodone, which I ran out of before the 25th. My dad informed me that I still had oxycodone from when I had my gall bladder out last year, but given the strength of that drug and the number of pills I had left of it, I decided that I wouldn't use it during the day, and that I'd only take one after trying to get to sleep and being unable to from pain. I had a few of those nights afterward, but the pain kept coming later in the night until it would hit at 5:00 AM. That abated too, but I still wake up every day at five in the morning before going back to sleep for a few more hours. I have no clue when to expect my first uninterrupted night of sleep, but with any luck it'll come soon. I've been slowly losing sleep for nearly three weeks now.

I decided early on while I was home that I should try to sing again. My reasoning, beyond obviously liking to sing, was that the doctors gave me a special tool to exercise my lungs by encouraging me to take deep breaths; I figured that since singing is one of the most demanding non-aerobic things your lungs can do, it would help get my lung capacity back to normal more quickly. This was how I discovered arguably the weirdest thing about this recovery: I cry when I sing anything that's even slightly sad. I haven't tried singing "Hallelujah" by John Cale yet. If "Dizzy" and "Cautioners" by Jimmy Eat World and "That's What You Get" by Paramore make me sob, I don't think I could even get through one verse of "Hallelujah." A friend of mine said that in some part of the world, the spleen is associated with melancholy. I'd say it's probably the lack thereof that's associated with it.

Done

Progress report

It's not done yet, but it's coming along. I need to put highlights and shadows on it, and then it'll be good.

Quotes on love

"Everyone is broken apart, inexperienced and incomplete. However, by living as such, we may change for the better into something bigger... something more gentle."
-Riddel, Chrono Cross

"A scattered dream that's like a far off memory...
A far off memory that's like a scattered dream...
I wanna line the pieces up.
Yours and mine."
-Sora, Kingdom Hearts

"Death cannot stop true love; only delay it for a little while."
-Westley, The Princess Bride

"(paraphrase) Voldemort sought power, but in doing so he abandoned the most powerful force in the world: love."
-Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Miscellaneous quotes

"That's now most none private schools are."
-Chet

"Of all the effing wastes of time with which I could be wasting my time..."
-Myself

"TVs just keep getting smaller and smaller, and bigger and bigger. Soon the medium TV will be a thing of the past."
-Dale Gribble

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."
-Douglas Adams

Quotes on individuality

"If I could do it all over again, I would have done it knowing that after you graduate, nobody gives a damn what your GPA was."
-Michael, The Last Kiss

"That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong."
- William JH Boetcker

"Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future."
-Ludo

"The minute you accept that you're different is the minute you become normal."
-Brad, Almost Normal

"Without free will, there is no difference between submission and rebellion."
-Metal Gear Solid

"Just because you have their attention doesn't mean you have their respect."
-Dale, King of the Hill

"I gotta take a stand. I'm bullshit. I put up with everything. My old man pushes me around, I never say anything. Well, he's not the problem. I'm the problem. I gotta take a stand. I gotta take a stand against him. I am not gonna sit on my ass as the events that affect me unfold to determine the course of my life. I'm gonna defend it. Right or wrong, I'm gonna defend it."
-Cameron, Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Productivity(?)

This summer's been a bust. I found a job in the first two weeks, but that turned out not to work when I failed certification (for waiting tables) and wasn't offered a chance at redemption. Luckily, I got a check for the twenty hours of training I was put through. Unluckily, I was only paid for two and a half of those hours, which means I only made $14.

I'm getting my spleen out in a week, provided the military HMO grants us their permission and gets us in for a pre-op physical. Knowing the military, this is a longshot. If it happens, however, I'll be the proud disowner of one spleen. Recovery is going to be a week long, which means I won't be able to take any walks or bungee jump for a little while. It's okay, though. I never take walks.

I've been playing video games for most of my summertime bores, but for some reason I've been on a drawing kick recently. Seriously, don't ask me why because I don't quite know myself. I made some crude attempts at drawing a Growlithe, I ended up drawing a sword from just making lines on a piece of paper, then drew a face with a micro-line technique that seems to work pretty well for me, and then I drew this:



I used the same micro-line technique I did for the last drawing I did, which was harder since I drew Klonoa on a much smaller scale. You can see a lot of erasure marks, but those can be cleaned up in Gimp when I start to color him.

Dreams

I had a dream this morning where my sister was on a show like American Idol as one of the top 10 contestants, and they had this song marathon thing where each person had to sing four songs in a row before they got to take a break, and the last song my sister sang was "Boys of Summer," and just as she finished up and was about to be told how she did by the judges, Fox just cut out.

Then I was going to tell my friends about it, and they were all playing mini-golf at the Jewish community center, and the older Jewish people there were really upset because my friends were eating their potato chips because my friends aren't Jewish, so they were dumping potato chips on the putting greens so that my friends couldn't keep playing.

I said that my friends had a right to be playing mini-golf because they paid to be there, and the Jewish people were just yelling things, and so I started talking to them calmly and an older man got into an argument with my friend Jess (who looked like Carla from Scrubs for some reason, which is odd because Jess is a short redhead), and I stepped in to defend her and said that the church is about community and love and celebrating life, and the old man said that his church had given him something much better than celebrating life: celebrating death.  I yelled "What about life AFTER death!" at him and he started screaming the Lord's Prayer (why, I don't know. He was Jewish), and in the middle of it he bowed down on the ground toward the church and sort of sobbed the rest of the prayer, and so I bowed down beside him and finished the prayer with him.

When he was done, he got up and walked back inside, and I started walking away, turned toward Jess, and said, "Come on. Come on, it's over." I think she said something about how he was wrong, and that we had to stay, and I said, "There's nothing that will change his mind short of himself. Whether or not he ever discovers that he's wrong isn't up to us. Now come on."

It's interesting how your dreams can teach you lessons you should already know. I hope that the old man doesn't regret being so afraid of death that he never opted to live, but it's hard for me to believe that he wouldn't feel as though he missed out.  If he does, then that will be very sad for him, but I can only tell him what I think of life; he's the one who has to make the choice to live.

What grates me about summer

One of my friends told me last night that a bunch of his friends had snagged the key to his campus's dorms and that they were going to spend the night there instead of in their apartments. Another one of my friends is spending his days helping his mother and my old drama teacher with their theatre camp for children. Another one of my friends is spending the summer as a counselor at a Boy Scout camp in Iowa. My sister is spending the summer working and hanging out with friends.

I had the chance at a job this summer. I was training to be a server at Red Robin. Training was excruciating; after every four-hour session I felt like I'd actually worked twice as long. It was great.

But certification rolled around yesterday. The long of the short of it is that I was given my own section, and I failed to supply my "Guests" (yes, it's capitalized 100% of the time) the "gift of time," and so I have to hand my shirt in on the Fourth of July. I spent $42 on a pair of non-slip shoes for the job. I didn't get to keep any of my own tips. Technically, I didn't have any of my own tables, so all of the tips people gave me went to the person who didn't wait on the tables. I'll receive a check when I hand my shirt in for all the hours I put in to training. The $51 is going to be spectacular, especially once expenditures are factored in. I don't have the chance to find another job this summer. It's already nearing the end of June.

Most, if not all, of my friends are able to go out and do something during the day, and a good number of them are doing things that they want to do. They have the chance to live for themselves, to do the things that they enjoy. I don't get to enjoy the same privileges. I sit at home every day and do next to nothing all day. I don't have the opportunity to live for myself. I just sit here, bored, and there's nothing I can do about it.

Things that cheer me

1. All episodes of Digimon to the end of season 3.
2. Nintendo, schools new and old (but especially the Super era).
3. Movies of any genre, so long as they're well-written.
4. My iPod Touch.
5. Apple in general, for their attention to detail and flair.
6. Being free to explore at my own pace.
7. Having opportunities to get out of my head every once in a while.
8. Music from the nineties.
9. Music I can wrap myself in.
10. Blankets I can wrap myself in.
11. That feeling of homeostasis.
12. Pajama pants.
13. Days that begin with rainy mornings.
14. Dreams where I can fly.
15. Sondheim, and any other musical composer who challenges the paradigm.
16. People who challenge the paradigm and succeed.
17. People who were born challenging the paradigm (I like them most of all).
18. Ohana.
19. Love.
20. God's plan.

Episode 57 is coming up.

A time capsule

A year ago, I was applying for jobs, trying to keep up with a vlog that I kept finding harder to remain interested in, hoping for good news on my GPA, and playing through Final Fantasy XII after getting frustrated with Metal Gear Solid 2 on Extreme difficulty.  I went to Disney World for a week in May and kept a journal about every day I spent there.

On July 5th, I had my gall bladder out, which had a rather painful week of recovery attached to it, and also necessitated the shaving of my entire chest in order to let the hair grow back in evenly.  The reason I had my gall bladder out was because the doctors pinpointed it as the source of extreme pain I had when I went to the emergency room one day in March.  I had gall stones because of my blood disorder.  After about four days' recovery, we decided to go to Shadow Lake and see what the Red Robin there was like.  I had the chili, and later that day discovered exactly what a migraine did to your entire body.

In the meantime, I remained at home waiting for something to happen when one day I got a phone call from Culver's asking me to come in for a job interview.  This happened no earlier than July 20, four weeks or so before the semester was going to start, and I ended up having orientation but not getting the job.

My GPA came back, and with it came my scholarship information.  I was losing $5,000 (half) of my academic scholarship.  Also, since I didn't find a roommate, Doane was charging me for single-occupant status in the face of a room shortage which basically pushed other students out of getting a room in the dorm they wanted.  My mom suggested that I take a semester off and stay at home until I was at UNL in the spring.  Luckily, this didn't end up happening.



So why am I writing about things that happened an entire year ago?  Because of what's been happening this summer.

This summer, I applied to eleven jobs around Bellevue, am trying to keep up with a vlog that I don't know whether or not I have the energy to do as frequently as I ever used to, went to Virginia Beach for a week in May and kept a journal over every day I was there, got good news on my GPA (a 3.4), and have recently quit playing Metal Gear Solid 3 out of frustration with Extreme difficulty.

Come June 19th, I'll be visiting a hematologist (somebody who knows a lot about blood) to decide what to do about my spleen.  I had an incident of jaundice in January that lead us to discover that my spleen is having trouble regulating my blood, which is, of course, part of my blood disorder.  I'll obviously need surgery to have the thing out, which I've been told will keep me in the hospital for at least a week, and then at home for at least another week.  Of course, this means I'm probably going to be shaved again.  I'm probably most upset about that... I don't know why, though.  I mean, the hair will all grow back, and after that it's not going to be noticeable that I even had my spleen out.

My GPA came back already, as I mentioned before.  It’s actually a great deal higher than I thought it would be at this point.  Of my five classes (Microeconomics, Art of Writing, Mass Media, Aural & Visual Literacy, and German 102), I expected only to get an A in one class, a B in only two classes, and a C in the other two.  Instead, I got an A in two of my classes and a B in the other three.  This resulted in a final GPA of 3.415.  Unfortunately, I already know I’m not receiving scholarships for this upcoming year, which means that I’ll be paying all $17,000 out of loans.  

The only conclusion I can draw about this is that, save a minor change in nouns, this summer is almost completely identical to the last one.  There are no stark revelations to be had; no planned trips to see anybody special; no breaks from the monotony I thought would be broken this year.  I’m being forced to read through the an old chapter of my life once more, and there are no stark differences between this time and the last.  Yes, I have a job now, but I guarantee that I’ll still be waiting for something to happen from now until something does.

William Goldman wrote The Princess Bride in the 1980s, but he did so in a way that made it sound like he wasn’t the author at all.  In his story, he was a sick child when his father first introduced him to the book, written by S. Morgenstern.  When he realized how great of a book it was, Goldman wanted to get it for his son, and after a painstaking search, finally found the original book, and discovered that it was an encyclopedia compared to what his father had read him.  It was the same book, but bogged down with accounts of events that had no bearing on the overall plot of the book, and so Goldman sought to cut out all of the boring chapters of the book and give us readers only the “good parts.”

I’ll bet the original manuscript was full of summers like mine.

Sunday, June 1

It feels strange getting back home. Back to the incessant classical my dad refuses not to listen to, back to the incredibly dull airport of Eppley, back to the dim-witted airport management that puts unclaimed bags from an earlier flight right in front of the conveyor belt so that nobody on the current flight can get to their bags easily, back to the weird smells of this place that we'd gotten used to before, back to Internet access, and back to undoubtedly boring days sitting in front of my computer screen while nothing happens.

That's not to say that I'm upset to be back; I couldn't be happier. I'm just not that happy about it to begin with. As I always say, the usual distinguishing factor between one summer and the last is how much older I am. Of course, this year holds promise to be different: I know that I at least have a job to look forward to, and assuming my parents buy a new car, I'll have the old one at least in time for next semester, but how long will it take before those things lose their novelty?

I really shouldn't complain. I know that my job will keep me busy as long as I'm there, and if my parents realize that I'm twenty by the time this year's Pride festivites roll around, I might just be out for those (HA!). And there'll probably be opportunities to get out of the house when I can bankroll gasoline.

I just hope that there's more to look forward to this summer than serving hamburgers to people, is all.

Saturday, May 31

One of the absolute craziest things I can possibly think of is
actually one of the things I've thought about most often.

Here's how it goes: say I'm hanging out with some of my friends,
playing Smash Bros. or just having lunch or whatever. We're talking
about stuff, having a good time, and then after a while I head back to
my own place, whatever that might mean at the time: my dorm, my house,
class, whatever. That sounds pretty normal, right? And I'm at my
place doing my own thing, and my friends are doing THEIR own thing,
and that's what's going on.

But here's where things get weird for me, is when I think about the
fact that my friends are actually thinking. While I'm not there,
they're still just as autonomous as when I am. But that isn't really
the weirdest part. Here's what just completely floors me whenever I
realize it. Are you ready? Okay...

People have the potential to think about ME when I'm not right there.
That's... Just... Bizarre. To me, I mean. Maybe some people don't
think it's so weird that they think about me, or even that others
think about them, but all my life I just never considered the
possibility that people thought specifically about me while I wasn't
around them.

Why is it so weird an idea that people think about me? I don't know.
It might have something to do with the fact that I was never ever
exposed to any effects of people thinking about me for the better part
of my life. I didn't really have friends until high school, so why
would anybody in any of my classes spare a second thought for a kid
that they just made fun of? I started doing things that actually
required socializing (theatre) in my sophomore year, but even then,
there was never really any kind of invitation extended by any of my
friends to any kind of party or anything, outside of cast parties, and
even at those I can barely recall socializing to any profound degree.

So there's a definite groundwork for a reaction of "seriously?!"
whenever somebody says "Oh, Josh, I was just thinking of you." I think
a lot about my friends, even when I haven't talked to them in a while,
but to hear that they do the same thing... I guess you could say I'm
not used to existing outside of myself.

How do you come to terms with the fact that you affect others' lives?

Friday, May 30

I do this thing sometimes in my sleep, I don't know if it's weird or
not, where I dream I'm hearing a song that I've never heard before in
my life. I don't know if that's weird, but I think it is pretty weird
that last night I dreamt I was hearing two songs I'd never heard
before in my life, at the same time. My dad was listening to one song
on TV, and I was trying to listen to one on my computer, but I don't
think that I've ever heard either song on the radio or on the Internet
or anything. I think that's a little weird.

We decided we'd go to Williamsburg today. I don't think there's
anything there but colonial stuff, which is bound to be nothing but
education. On the way, I listened to my playlist of music from video
games. I like it because it only has a few songs with words, and the
ones that have words are mostly slow, so I don't have any lyrics to
think about and I can just let my mind drift wherever. I started
thinking about stuff like secret Santa and what I would give everyone
at QSA if they ever did a secret Santa game. I thought of a few
things I'd give people, but they probably don't have secret Santas, so
I don't think that'll be an issue.

I also thought about how I would feel if we got into a car crash and I
survived. I don't know if I would end up in the hospital for my
injuries, but if I did it would be a good excuse to sleep for a
while. I don't know why, but I also thought about the tornadoes in
Nebraska and what life would be like if my mom died in one.

We had breakfast at IHOP. I had the chocolate chip pancakes because I
didn't think anything else sounded very good, and water because I
wasn't very thirsty and didn't want my parents to spend money that
they didn't have to. There was a family next to us that sounded like
they were talking about boob jobs. I guess it's a good thing I
usually eat breakfast alone, because a lot of people I've overheard at
breakfast these past few days have talked about really weird things
like boob jobs, or they just swore a lot for no real reason. I don't
think breakfast is the best time for either of those things, and I'd
probably be uncomfortable sitting with those people.

I'm really trying to stay as unengaged as I can today. I feel like if
I involve myself in any active thought process that I'll end up seeing
something or hearing something that will make me realize that I'm
feeling empty beyond a point that I can be filled right now. I don't
like feeling that way. I don't think anybody does but I feel like
maybe I feel empty more often than others. This sounds a little
weird, but I feel better about life when I don't have to really think
about it, so I go off into daydreams and think about absolutely
nothing and absolutely everything at the same time, and I don't have
to smile and I don't care if I cry. And it's all okay if I just keep
my mind disengaged until I fall asleep and dream about absolutely
nothing and absolutely everything at the same time.

And two songs that I've never heard before in my life are playing at
the same time.

Thursday, May 29

Have you ever been to an amusement park, and been in line for a roller coaster and had this feeling in your gut that it was a bad idea? I get that every single time I'm in line for a roller coaster. It doesn't even have to be a scary roller coaster, either. It's any time I get on a roller coaster, even if I've ridden it a hundred times already. Actually, I think the most times I've ever ridden one roller coaster was seven times, butthat feeling in my stomach never goes away.

It starts before I get in line, even. The sign out in front of the ride always gets me. Then I feel more and more apprehension as I get closer to the actual roller coaster. It's not a time thing, it's a proximity thing. No matter how long I wait to get in the seat, I feel more scared the closet I get. Sometimes I think I might walk out of line just before I have to strap myself in.

And then I get into my seat, and I pull down on the lap bar or my shoulder harness or I buckle my seatbelt, and then I think about how much stuff I've got in my pockets and think about what I would do if anything flew out at any point and I could never find it again. I'd be pretty upset, no joke.

And then the person comes and tries to lift up your lap bar with no more than an eighth of their strength. Like, if a baby can't lift your restraints, then surely the G-force doesn't stand a chance. Then you hear somebody from somewhere say "clear" in what you can't tell is a harsh tone, a bored tone, or a profoundly upset tone (like your dad uses when you get a bad grade on your report card), and you get jostled out of the gate and you feel even more scared than when you were in line.

There's always that really tiny drop out of the gate before you get on the conveyor belt. It tries to trick you into thinking that this is all going to be easy, but then you hear the clanging of the belt that drags you up and you're sure that this is the undocumented sound that everyone hears when they're about to die.

And then, silence as you crest the hill, and nothing. The feeling in your stomach intensifies for a moment as you plummet toward the ground, but once you make your first turn back up into the air, there is no fear. And the sounds all converge into nothing, and all of the colors mix as they brush by you, and all that is left is the feeling. Not the one of fear, but a new one, a sense of awe and wonder and euphoria, and you're convinced that nothing is true outside of that. And you don't have anything to worry about anymore, because you ARE flying. And everything around you is gone from your conscious and everything is beautiful. Beautiful enough to make you cry.

And even if you can't see them all the time, you're on rails. Everything's alright. Yes, everything's alright.

Today

I think the fact that I'm posting old blogs now shouldn't excuse me from the fact that I have feelings and events to chronicle right now. I didn't write anything about yesterday, but most of what's important is still fresh in my mind.

I'm relishing the return of Internet into my life, but whether or not that's a good thing remains to be seen. I feel like yesterday might have been more productive without it, since all I really did was spend the day trying over and over to upload photos from vacation onto Facebook while I listened to AOL Radio. I also made a clip of an episode of Scrubs which I felt was pertinent to the things going on in my life right now. But other than that, there's not much else to report.

I had a dream Sunday night about him. We were in a cement courtyard, kind of like the one on UNL's campus, only very rearranged. He was sitting in the very middle of the plaza, and I came up and sat down next to him. I don't remember nearly anything that was said, except that he didn't really want to talk (last night on Yahoo had him saying the same thing), and then Smash Mouth took the stage and started playing "All Star." I guess my brain's trying to send me a coded message...

You never know if you don't go,
You never shine if you don't glow...

I wish he was having my dreams instead of me. I already know the things my dreams are trying to tell me. That's the entire reason I was thinking about that clip of Scrubs.

Dr. Cox: "No, I am honestly trying to tell you that I don't think I was being clear with you before. In fact, I think I was being a pretty lousy teacher.
"Look, I think putting one in the win column every now and then is what gives us the juice to keep plugging along in games that we know deep down, we're not gonna win. And that's why I locked-in so intensely with that patient, because opportunites, they... God, they come along so rarely in this place, and when they do, you just can't let them slip through your fingers. You can not. You know?"

Cox is talking about matters of life and death here. Yes, his patient was high-risk, but she still had so much life to live that making the attempt to treat her, even if it ended in failure and she died anyway, was worth all of the risk and more.

Far too often, we look at things in our life and say to ourselves that there's too much risk involved in pursuing something that we really want, but what we often forget until it's too late to stand up and fight is that nothing worth having comes easy. And yes, it can really hurt to put yourself out there because if you fail, you feel like the effort was wasted, but if you don't put any effort in at all, then you might have missed out on a great success (you never know if you don't go). And just like with Dr. Cox's patient, you might not have the easiest road ahead of you; sometimes you might even have something blocking your way, and you have to relegate yourself to staying in one place until you can find a solution to your problem. You might have to simply keep your patient on life support for a while until you know what's wrong, and that can be scary, but you have to keep the window of opportunity open, even if it's just open by a small crack, so that you can open it all the way later on (you never shine if you don't glow).



I think sometimes we leave too much up to "fate," and we convince ourselves not to move because of it. Sometimes, we might even think we're choosing to stand still when we're really retreating into "fate." But sometimes, you can't let yourself do that. Fate is a set of unpredictable factors in our life, culminating into a point where we have to make a decision. Fate is what brings us to our points of action, but it's up to us to decide what happens next when we hit those crossroads.

Wednesday, May 28

Today was a lot better than any other day in the last two weeks. I heard the song "Be Yourself" by Audioslave when I woke up this morning, and it didn't feel like it was in a mocking tone. It felt more like an anthem. My mom told me after I got out of the shower that we weren't going to eat at the beach club on the resort. That made me really happy.

I guess I haven't said anything about where we're staying up to this point. Since my dad was in the military for twenty years, we get to go to special military recreation places for discounts compared to other places we could stay. I've only seen the name of this place once, so I don't remember it now, but it's a very pretty military base with a lot of trees and two lighthouses, and it's on the beachfront. The cool thing is that we're on a point that juts out to the north, so even though we're on the east coast, we see the sun set over the ocean. Maybe that didn't make a lot of sense the way it was written, but that's okay.

Anyway, that's the cool part about the base. The uncool parts are that we don't really have a very nice room, except for the balcony. There's also no wireless on the premises. Well, there is wireless, but the router (Wireless Escape) costs $3.50 an hour to use (it costs a lot to escape, I guess). You'd think they could pass the cost of broadband on to the room bill or taxpayers or something, but I guess they're able to make more money this way, since they charge $3.50 an hour. The breakfast, as I've said, is really bad, and there are tons of little kids everywhere. I guess there are little kids everywhere, but you don't really notice them as much as when you're on vacation. It really amplifies the feeling of isolation that had me feeling down Monday and Tuesday.

Anyway, the resort only has rooms on the second and third floors, so we're on the third floor, and there's a lot of blue everywhere because of the ocean, and because they painted the resort blue and they went with blue comforters for the bed and they have blue carpet and pictures about sailing. All of the trees make you feel really secluded when you're driving around the base. I think that they use that fact to their advantage. I saw one building, I think it was the 703, and it was really small on the outside. I saw another building elsewhere that was on a hill, and at the base of the hill was a solid tan door. And then I see dirt roads sometimes that go really far into the trees before you even see a gate to another building. I bet that those buildings also look small on the outside.

Breakfast was great. It wasn't anything different than you can get at any other place, but it was cooked well. I had eggs, bacon, two pancakes, and coffee. Then we went to a huge aquarium in the west side of Virginia Beach. There were a lot of interesting sea creatures, and I got some good pictures. I guess I was a little disappointed that the otters were all sleeping, but the way they were huddled seemed really sweet to me, and when we walked back through on our way out, one of them was awake and just watching nothing. He was cute.

I listened to "Bat Boy" part of the drives (which is a great musical to listen to if you've ever felt like you didn't belong), but after I got through with that, I switched on my Green playlist, which is all music that makes me think of the color green. I also tried to get any kind of wireless signal I could. Mostly so that I could check my email, but I also wanted to do some things on Facebook. It was really hard to get a signal for long enough, though, and most of the day I had my inbox tell me that I had ten new messages but I couldn't read any of them.

After the aquarium, we drove to Norfolk to see the Nauticus museum. That was pretty cool, but for the most part I was distracted by the fact that I hadn't had any lunch and the fact that I was waiting to hear back from Red Robin about my training schedule. Anyway, they had a few sea creatures there, too, but it was mostly a museum about studying the oceans and water and the USS Wisconsin, which is docked in a harbor right next to the museum. They had a cefeteria, but it was under renovation.

When we got outside, I was able to get a signal from a nearby bistro, and I finally got my email messages. Then we found a mall with a lot of restaurants and we decided to eat at California Pizza. They have a lot of different kinds of pizza there, but my sister got pepperoni and my mom and dad got things that weren't pizza, so I was the only one with a cool pizza. I had the chipotle chicken pizza, and it was really good. I usually don't like ranch dressing, but it was spicy, which I do appreciate. It also had black beans and corn salsa, so it reminded me of a Chipotle burrito in that sense.

After dinner, we went to the Barnes and Noble on the second floor (if my voice sounds different in this blog, you can blame it on the fact that I got "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" while we were there. I'm already more than halfway through the book). Actually, that was before dinner. After dinner, we went to the Apple store and I talked with a really cute salesman there. The rest of my family was looking at computers that my sister could take to college, and near the end I got to show my Apple expertise and talk hardware in front of Jesse (the salesman's name). He made a comment about the store hiring, but I said it wouldn't work too well because I'm from Nebraska. Later, my mom said that he probably only said it because he liked me. I wouldn't mind if that were true, but dating would sure be a bitch.

We went to the candle store and I registered my phone for Facebook Mobile before we left the mall, and once we got into the car I started reading my new book, which is what I've been doing up until the point when I got ready for bed. I can see a few parallels between me and Charlie: thinking about almost everything, talking with my freshman writing teacher (I wonder how Doc is doing, actually), and thinking about infinity and feeling infinite, and liking the kind of music that you can't really dance to, and making thoughtful playlists and wondering if people are really happier than me. I have a habit of picking up the writing style of authors I've been reading for a little while, but my voice usually comes back after I'm done reading the book. If I keep going at the rate I was today, I'll be done tomorrow, definitely.

I don't know what I'm getting from reading this book, personally, but I know that I like it. I think about how the author thought of writing it, and what others thought when they read it. I know that there are some things I don't believe about it, but these things are usually opinions that characters in the book have about life.

I can definitely relate to Charlie on the level of a wallflower, though. I guess anybody who would read the book could, though, unless they just like to read.

Wednesday, May 28

Today was a lot better than any other day in the last two weeks. I
heard the song "Be Yourself" by Audioslave when I woke up this
morning, and it didn't feel like it was in a mocking tone. It felt
more like an anthem. My mom told me after I got out of the shower
that we weren't going to eat at the beach club on the resort. That
made me really happy.

I guess I haven't said anything about where we're staying up to this
point. Since my dad was in the military for twenty years, we get to
go to special military recreation places for discounts compared to
other places we could stay. I've only seen the name of this place
once, so I don't remember it now, but it's a very pretty military base
with a lot of trees and two lighthouses, and it's on the beachfront.
The cool thing is that we're on a point that juts out to the north, so
even though we're on the east coast, we see the sun set over the
ocean. Maybe that didn't make a lot of sense the way it was written,
but that's okay.

Anyway, that's the cool part about the base. The uncool parts are
that we don't really have a very nice room, except for the balcony.
There's also no wireless on the premises. Well, there is wireless,
but the router (Wireless Escape) costs $3.50 an hour to use (it costs
a lot to escape, I guess). You'd think they could pass the cost of
broadband on to the room bill or taxpayers or something, but I guess
they're able to make more money this way, since they charge $3.50 an
hour. The breakfast, as I've said, is really bad, and there are tons
of little kids everywhere. I guess there are little kids everywhere,
but you don't really notice them as much as when you're on vacation.
It really amplifies the feeling of isolation that had me feeling down
Monday and Tuesday.

Anyway, the resort only has rooms on the second and third floors, so
we're on the third floor, and there's a lot of blue everywhere because
of the ocean, and because they painted the resort blue and they went
with blue comforters for the bed and they have blue carpet and
pictures about sailing. All of the trees make you feel really
secluded when you're driving around the base. I think that they use
that fact to their advantage. I saw one building, I think it was the
703, and it was really small on the outside. I saw another building
elsewhere that was on a hill, and at the base of the hill was a solid
tan door. And then I see dirt roads sometimes that go really far into
the trees before you even see a gate to another building. I bet that
those buildings also look small on the outside.

Breakfast was great. It wasn't anything different than you can get at
any other place, but it was cooked well. I had eggs, bacon, two
pancakes, and coffee. Then we went to a huge aquarium in the west
side of Virginia Beach. There were a lot of interesting sea
creatures, and I got some good pictures. I guess I was a little
disappointed that the otters were all sleeping, but the way they were
huddled seemed really sweet to me, and when we walked back through on
our way out, one of them was awake and just watching nothing. He was
cute.

I listened to "Bat Boy" part of the drives (which is a great musical
to listen to if you've ever felt like you didn't belong), but after I
got through with that, I switched on my Green playlist, which is all
music that makes me think of the color green. I also tried to get any
kind of wireless signal I could. Mostly so that I could check my
email, but I also wanted to do some things on Facebook. It was really
hard to get a signal for long enough, though, and most of the day I
had my inbox tell me that I had ten new messages but I couldn't read
any of them.

After the aquarium, we drove to Norfolk to see the Nauticus museum.
That was pretty cool, but for the most part I was distracted by the
fact that I hadn't had any lunch and the fact that I was waiting to
hear back from Red Robin about my training schedule. Anyway, they had
a few sea creatures there, too, but it was mostly a museum about
studying the oceans and water and the USS Wisconsin, which is docked
in a harbor right next to the museum. They had a cefeteria, but it
was under renovation.

When we got outside, I was able to get a signal from a nearby bistro,
and I finally got my email messages. Then we found a mall with a lot
of restaurants and we decided to eat at California Pizza. They have a
lot of different kinds of pizza there, but my sister got pepperoni and
my mom and dad got things that weren't pizza, so I was the only one
with a cool pizza. I had the chipotle chicken pizza, and it was
really good. I usually don't like ranch dressing, but it was spicy,
which I do appreciate. It also had black beans and corn salsa, so it
reminded me of a Chipotle burrito in that sense.

After dinner, we went to the Barnes and Noble on the second floor (if
my voice sounds different in this blog, you can blame it on the fact
that I got "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" while we were there. I'm
already more than halfway through the book). Actually, that was before
dinner. After dinner, we went to the Apple store and I talked with a
really cute salesman there. The rest of my family was looking at
computers that my sister could take to college, and near the end I got
to show my Apple expertise and talk hardware in front of Jesse (the
salesman's name). He made a comment about the store hiring, but I
said it wouldn't work too well because I'm from Nebraska. Later, my
mom said that he probably only said it because he liked me. I
wouldn't mind if that were true, but dating would sure be a bitch.

We went to the candle store and I registered my phone for Facebook
Mobile before we left the mall, and once we got into the car I started
reading my new book, which is what I've been doing up until the point
when I got ready for bed. I can see a few parallels between me and
Charlie: thinking about almost everything, talking with my freshman
writing teacher (I wonder how Doc is doing, actually), and thinking
about infinity and feeling infinite, and liking the kind of music that
you can't really dance to, and making thoughtful playlists and
wondering if people are really happier than me. I have a habit of
picking up the writing style of authors I've been reading for a little
while, but my voice usually comes back after I'm done reading the
book. If I keep going at the rate I was today, I'll be done tomorrow,
definitely.

I don't know what I'm getting from reading this book, personally, but
I know that I like it. I think about how the author thought of
writing it, and what others thought when they read it. I know that
there are some things I don't believe about it, but these things are
usually opinions that characters in the book have about life.

I can definitely relate to Charlie on the level of a wallflower,
though. I guess anybody who would read the book could, though, unless
they just like to read.

Clouds

Well, that one is a bunny
And that one is a star,
And I can't see that one
Because it's too far.
These big puffs of water that hang in the air
Are almost too beautiful for it to be fair.

(chorus)
Well, if I had a paintbrush
And a canvas of sky,
I'd make pictures in the Heavens
About you and I.
But the clouds that are up there
Are great to pretend.
If we just have each other,
We're okay in the end.

Now, that one is a puma
And he's not really mad,
He's really kinda funny,
'Cause he's got a salad.
And that one's pretty special
For as far as I see,
It looks like people kissing,
That one's you, n'then there's me.

(Chorus)

And that one's quite something,
And I'll tell you why.
It's a little boy and his best friend
Both saying goodbye.
These clouds are all fragile,
And they'll all fade away,
But if it's alright with you,
I'll stay with you all day.

(Chorus)

Tuesday, May 27

I couldn't sleep last night because of thoughts running through my head and snores running like a lawn mower long overdue for retirement. That said, it surprised me that I woke up as early as 8:30 this morning. It probably had something to do with the large amount of activity progressing around my bed. I don't usually sleep well with activity around me.

Breakfast was, I dare say, on par with if not worse than the insanity that was Sodexho. My dad liked it, nobody else did. In the meantime, we drove down to the boardwalk and made attempts at getting tans. We all failed. Then, our attention was brought to the shops on the street next to the boardwalk. I knew after roughly the second shop that all of them were going to have mostly identical products, ranging from crap you put on a shelf/desk and then forget about for the rest of your life except when you dust to crass shirts with such clever phrases as "I'M SHY ...but I have a huge dick," and/or pictures of women in some wilderness spot, with some kind of high-power firearm, wearing nothing but some kind of underwear. This reaffirmed my strong, red-blooded Christian belief that unless you like booze, bullets and boobs, you're not a real man.

It might have been the amount of fluid I'd consumed during the day combined with the insane heat of the car when we got back in, or possibly it was just my state of heart, but I felt incredibly nauseous for at least half of the drive back to the hotel. That feeling came again after a short while, when I ate some pizza from the poolside cabana and then tried to tan some more on the beach (still failure). It lasted until about the time I got back to the room, and shortly after my dad walked in, I had to use the bathroom. It was diarrhea, which is my body's way of telling me that not even it believes I'm enjoying myself. My stomach churned for a time afterward, but I ignored it until we went to the nearby lighthouse. Walking up all of those steps didn't seem to have that much of an impact on my legs while we were at the top, but on the way down my thighs felt incredibly awkward, and when I took the first stair outside of the lighthouse my legs felt suddenly like completely giving out. I made sure to hold onto the handrail on the way back to the car, as I was the last one in line and I didn't think anybody would have noticed me falling to the ground behind them all.

We went to a predominantly seafood-oriented restaurant for dinner. On the way there I made attempts to find routers I could link to, and felt an incredible rush of excitement when, for two seconds, I was logged on to Facebook. If I had the opportunity to get a real message out to a friend as opposed to the 140-letter tweets I'm currently able to send, I would have been much more excited. I couldn't, and I had a chicken quesadilla for dinner.

Monday, May 26

Today was, by many counts, not a good day. I couldn't get to sleep last night before midnight, and I had to wake up at 5:00 this morning in order to keep the family on schedule to leave our house at 6:00 in order to get to the airport at least an hour and a half before our flight. I woke up at 5:00, and I haven't really recovered from it [citation: my Twitters]. My iPod's battery was draining unusually quickly all day, but that didn't really play into any kind of music shortage, so I guess that's a wash. I was considerably cranky, though. Maybe that's in anticipation for things to come tonight, which can probably decide whether or not the rest of the week goes well at all.

I wanted to have a book purchased and in the process of being read this week, but Borders closed too early for me to get it last night and none of the "bookstores" we visited in any of the airports had it. The last bookstore was just terrible (A Better You is both fiction AND mystery, but by no means is it self-help), and I gave up hope of finding the book there when the guy behind the counter said "I don't know, go check" when I asked him if they had it. I HADN'T THOUGHT OF THAT!

If there's one definitively good thing to come from this day, it's that I wrote another song while I was on the plane. It has a sound and subject matter basically inspired by the soundtrack to Juno. Now I just need somebody who can play acoustic guitar.

I bought a pair of trunks and shades here, since I couldn't find either of said article back at home. I also set up my phone (which has unlimited texts now) for Twitter. So now even if I don't have a working Wi-Fi connection, I have a link to the Internet. My friends shan't be left entirely clueless about what's going on while I'm here. In the meantime, these journals will chronicle the goings-on in more depth than the updates I am able to provide. I'll post these as soon as I can, and in a manner that keeps my tubes to the Sphere uncluttered.

Chanticleer

My sister is in a show in Council Bluffs, at the Chanticleer theatre. She plays Cha Cha in Grease, which suits her as a dancer, but the fact that all of the other characters call her "gorilla" doesn't quite work in my mind. A 5'4", 100 pound gorilla would probably die.

The fact that she's made it into Grease is quite something, especially since this is only her third or fourth attempt to break into community theatre, and her second successful entry. Her last character at a community theatre was Hope in "Anything Goes."

Even if she only appears in five scenes, she still has a presence that commands the stage. She owns her roles, even if she should be out of place as a "gorilla".

I should admit that Grease isn't really my kind of musical. The songs have a sound to them which just clangs against my concept of rock & roll, and my taste in music in general. The plot feels too simple, with characters who have very little depth to them, and the end result of all the fanfare leads to a sweet girl going against her innermost principles in order to appease the crowd of people around her, whom she gravitates toward for reasons almost completely unknown. I'm just glad there didn't happen to be any heroin addicts at Rydell.

There's almost a lesson to this show, if only it weren't marred by a short-sighted ending. Maybe Sandy doesn't actually sell her soul for the wrong crowd of friends. Maybe the only thing that really changes is the way she dresses and how much she's willing to stand up for herself. If that's the case, then good for her, but if after the end of the show Danny whips out a condom, throws on a record of Huey Lewis, and breaks out a six-pack of Corona, then where does that leave Sandy? Is she really all the better for her transformation? Or will she wake up in the morning and hate herself all the more for what she's done?

I hope for her sake that Sandy doesn't forget who she is just because of who she's associated herself with. Thinking that you're not adequate as who God made you based on what the people around you think is such a disservice to yourself. My sister has a vitality to all of the characters she does. There's just something in her smile that shines through whatever character she plays, and it makes you know that whatever role she's in, whether it's a gorilla or Hope, she's being true to herself and doing what she loves.

The name "Chanticleer" reminds me of an old Don Bluth movie called "Rock-a-Doodle." The main character is a rooster, named Chanticleer, who lives on a farm and makes the sun rise by singing. When everyone comes to their senses and realizes that the sun rises on its own, Chanticleer feels like he doesn't have a purpose and goes off to Vegas to become a lounge singer. I can't remember nearly anything about the movie, but in the end Chanticleer goes back onto the farm and sings to wake up the sun, not because it's his duty, but because it's where he's happy. Regardless of what others tell him they think he should do, he's found his place.

I'm glad my sister's found hers.

The day where I did nothing.

I went to bad last night no later than 11:30. It was a really bad day for me, and I'd go as far as saying that every day this week has been a bad one. Today wasn't much different. I couldn't sleep at all when I went to bed, and so I logged on to Meebo at midnight and tried talking with people. Nothing of substance was said, but it only took an hour for my eyes to get droopy. Turns out, of course, that droopy isn't enough, and I stayed in an uncomfortable coma from 1:00 to 6:30. Unable to take any more pretend-sleep, I logged on to Meebo again and caught the only person who's mattered this week as he was heading out to work. Once he had left, I tried the whole sleep thing again, then abandoned my attempts at 7:00 and got ready for the day.

By the time I made it downstairs, I was tired enough again to fall asleep, so I lay down on the couch and pulled out my iPod, to type on its notepad all of the things I wanted to say to the only person who's mattered this week. When that was done, I rolled onto my side and slept until my stomach demanded attention. I gave it the usual breakfast: cinnamon life (all we have in the way of cereal) with some mixed-in bran (all we have in the way of keeping my bowels just shy of total misery). When that was out of the way, I got on my computer, and logged on to retype everything to the only person who's mattered this week from my iPod and into Adium. Afterward, I composed Green, a playlist intended to only have songs inspiring fresh starts and new outlooks, sans any hint of love (something I currently see as cruelly ironic). Either my heart wasn't in it enough, or I'm a helpless romantic with too many songs centered around that theme, because when I was finished making the playlist, I only had 51 songs. I didn't feel like listening to it once I'd finished, and opted for my normal playlist of some 390 songs. When shuffled, it usually has a good sense of fitting the mood I'm in at a given time. Today wasn't different: the songs were all downbeat. During the ten songs I listened to, I got back onto Adium and typed a few more things to the only person who's mattered this week, and once I'd said everything that was on my mind, I retired once again to the couch downstairs. It was 2:00. I woke up when my dad got home, just before 4:00. Now I'm writing this blog.

I nearly started crying when I was in the middle of the first few sentences of this. I just started crying again now, thinking about how my father, who has never been one of many words, noticed how depressed I was on Tuesday and talked to me about it. I'm fairly sure he's still concerned, because my mood hasn't drastically changed between now and then. I mean, I just told you I'm crying right now.

I know that this shouldn't have been such a bad week. I got a new cell phone, I have my first job, and I'll be doing orientation for it on Saturday, two days before my family leaves for Virginia Beach. But what does that mean for me, really? A shiny new toy, and the finest symbol of power any red-blooded American can think of. Toys don't intrinsically contain anything of value to the human soul, and power is nothing without a means or a reason to share it. What good will my paychecks do if all I ever spend them on are toys that remain static on my shelves all my life? What good is saving that money for something grand if the only person who will witness its marvel is me? There's no sense to it, and so all of these things I have or will have... they're as empty as I am right now.

I don't know how much more often my heart can go through this pain. Love leaves deeper scars than anything else I know.

Waiting For My Real Life to Begin

Any minute now, my ship is coming in
I'll keep checking the horizon
I'll stand on the bow, feel the waves come crashing
Come crashing down down down, on me

And you say, be still my love
Open up your heart
Let the light shine in
But don't you understand
I already have a plan
I'm waiting for my real life to begin

When I awoke today, suddenly nothing happened
But in my dreams, I slew the dragon
And down this beaten path, and up this cobbled lane
I'm walking in my old footsteps, once again
And you say, just be here now
Forget about the past, your mask is wearing thin
Let me throw one more dice
I know that I can win
I'm waiting for my real life to begin

Any minute now, my ship is coming in
I’ll keep checking the horizon
And I'll check my machine, there's sure to be that call
It's gonna happen soon, soon, soon
It's just that times are lean

And you say, be still my love
Open up your heart, let the light shine in
Don't you understand
I already have a plan
I'm waiting for my real life to begin

On a clear day
I can see
See a very long way

On a clear day
I can see
See a very long way

2007-2008 in review

Well, summer's here now. It's likely to suck, just like many of those before it, but I've gotten used to it. I spent the day unpacking my room and playing World of Warcraft. It's business as usual.

And I wouldn't be necessarily upset with this, if it just felt more like I was taking notice of everything around me.

The real problem is, I don't feel that way. I feel like every day I move with my eyes closed; without really seeing what I'm doing or
where I'm going. Life has acquired that dreamy feeling that dreams have. I can't count the number of times I've sat somewhere and completely spaced out about anything around me.

And maybe I'm not missing anything important. Maybe the stuff I'm spacing on is just my most basic routine, and my brain is just rejecting unimportant memories before they clog my mind, but I still feel like I'm not seeing everything I should. I feel like amid all of the things I don't pay attention to, there's a lot that does deserve my attention.

Still, it feels like I have my dreams, and then I have my daydreams. Who's to say that I'm really awake? Why doesn't it feel like my eyes are open, even when they are?

What am I missing?

Microeconomics Question

If the addition of one person in your dorm reduces your total product
output by 20% and increases your total resource input by 25%, what is
the marginal benefit of killing them?

Bus ride

In order to determine exactly how much I can get for a piece of jewelry I plan on pawning, I take a bus to the mall in Lincoln. The walk to the bus stop is cold and dreary, a stark contrast to how the mall will feel, and I see faces outside of all kinds of people.

As I reach the bus stop, I hear a little girl screaming and crying. I would investigate the matter, but the mother's cursing and telling the girl not to cry as the mother puts the girl's earring in tells me all I need to know. I wonder for a time why the mother is forcing the piercing upon the child, but that too is made somewhat apparent by the fact that the girl had apparently taken the earrings out during school. At some point, the girl starts coughing and the mother warns her not to make herself sick. I laugh at the idea in my head that by coughing, one could somehow contract a disease.

I confirm my bus route and then go to sit down. A little boy is walking along one of the cement sides to a tree plot. The mother who was fighting with her daughter's ears tells Bubba to get himself down from thing. The child is barely three years old, blue-eyed, and svelt, and I wonder to myself what qualities the mother thought the child had that would deem him a Bubba, before I begin to wonder what Bubba might be short for.

There are no unoccupied seats near the front of the bus, so I take a side-facing seat near the back. A girl sits to my right and listens to her iPod as she gazes out the window. I gaze out my window, too, for a time, until an old lady nearer to the front of the bus offers me a cross engraved with the words "God loves you," and asks me to pass a similar cross to the girl behind us. It never hurts to be reminded of why Jesus died.

I get to the mall, and have my jewelry's value estimated. $120 isn't too bad a price, and if I start at a higher price at the pawn shop, I just might be able to get that for it.

As nice as it is to know that I can get some good money for this, it's more interesting to think about the people who ride the bus on a regular basis. In front of me right now is an older man in a fedora. A woman in the seat next to me has a plastic wristwatch clipped to her backpack.

What are their stories, outside of the bus, away from the bus stop? Will I eventually get mugged in my regular use of this on the bus?

Nobody knows but they.

I imagine...

That Marvin the Robot from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" was so depressed because he was an economics major.

Mini-bio/main creed

I've been accused of not taking life seriously enough from time to time. The irony in this is that I've also been accused of taking life far too seriously. In the end, I guess we can blame my world views, since I try not to look at the global problems as much as I try to look at the domestic problems. In the end, this tends to make my experiences, and what I gain from my experiences, very personal. On occasion, I'll do what I can to spread a message that I find very important, but people might get upset at me for not having something as profound as "Save Darfur" on my tongue. On the other hand, I do hope that people end up taking my messages to heart when they find out what they mean in their own lives.

I know that it's never easy to take somebody's word on personal advice, because for whatever reason we feel that our cases are unique. Maybe it's all of that "You're special because there's only one of you" crap that we got fed in the '80s and '90s, but we as people almost never learn from each others' mistakes. Douglas Adams once said, "Human beings are unique in both their ability to learn from others' mistakes, and in their apparent disinclination to do so."

The point is that no matter how much somebody wishes to be an example from which somebody else can learn, a good number of lessons in life just refuse to go through our heads until we learn them the hard way. I certainly learn a good number of lessons through pain, but I'm not the first, nor will I be the last. Still, it's a shot of benevolent optimism that I might be a role model for somebody out there in the world, that they'll actually learn from my failures before they make the same mistakes themselves. Of course, they would be the person to celebrate, as opposed to me, because they would be the ones to actually learn their lesson.

Things that annoy me:

1: Crocs
2: Spam texts
3: Spam email
4: Chain mail
5: Chain blogs
6: Myspace
7: People who say that Facebook and Myspace are essentially the same
8: Emo bands such as Simple Plan and Fall Out Boy
9: Emo people
10: The emo things that emo people believe will help change the world
(eg: Sharpieing "love" on people's arms)
11: Family Guy
12: Movies that believe that referencing another movie means that
you're spoofing it
13: Movies that spoof things that society has already accepted as
ridiculous
14: People who spell "boy" with an i, "why" without the w or h, "you"
without the y or the o, any word with a number in place of letters,
and "definitely" with an a
15: People who don't use punctuation in their sentences
16: People who don't have a subject and a predicate in their sentences
17: People who neither punctuate nor have a subject and a predicate in
their sentences
18: Will Ferrel
19: People who will deliberately look away from you as you cross paths
with them, as if they're too busy to smile at you
20: People who will endlessly and deliberately lead you on in order to
make you doubt the worth of taking chances, and the worth of yourself
21: Movies with or by that Napoleon Dynamite kid
22: People who don't talk to you when they have a problem with you

Song Number Four

This Thing Called Love

I heard a line
In a children’s rhyme
That I had never heard before.
It was quite absurd,
Because it had a word
That I had never seen in my store.
I went up to my mom,
And told her my problem,
But it had only seemed to get her sore.
She said, “Get out of here, son.
Don’t try to bother me none,
‘Cause I don’t know what it means
anymore.”

(chorus)
Where is this thing called “love”?
Is it up above,
Or in a mother’s glove,
Or is it only for the doves?
Where is this thing called “love?”
‘Cause I’ve been looking around
For an eternity now,
And I still can’t find this thing called “love.”

I took a look
Into a chapter book
To see how it would read,
But lo and behold,
The simple story it told
Had the word that was strange to me.
A boy and a girl
Who went and took on the world
With this strange little mystery.
But I still didn’t know
This strange emotion, and so
I found it all really hard to believe.

(chorus)

I graduated
And then I celebrated
That I could start on my life, of course.
They said, “Make good in your life,
go on and find a wife
And understand that secret force.”
So I met a sweet girl,
And she had beautiful curls
We found a rev’rend who would endorse.
But then I came to find
That how it felt in my mind
Was like a carriage without a horse.

(chorus)

I stumbled toward
A big executive board,
And I made it in right on time.
Said a kid with bright eyes,
“This is the answer, you guys
To leave the competition far behind.”
Said, “We’ll let love be the key
To our triumphant story.”
And all the suits in the room did incline.
But it was then that I knew
That for my whole life through,
True love was never much more than a lie.

STEVE JOBS!!!

A press release was made regarding the state of applications on the iPhone. Five companies and a few freelance programmers have already made some frickin' sweet apps for the platform. Apple has the infrastructure for direct downloads and downloads via iTunes ready to go. That won't stop them from keeping the software from the end user for three months, though.

Anybody else happen to remember the good old days when Apple would say, "Oh yeah, and this technology is already available to consumers nationwide"?

Propagandifts

Propagandifts

Student Gocernment (which already sounds far less fun than StudCo) is having elections today. The three parties are All N, Bright, and Ignite. Setting aside their platforms for the sake of this post, they've essentially resorted to bribery to get people to vote. Here's what I've gotten today:

Bright: an Almond Joy,
Ignite: a Fireball,
All N: a two of diamonds from a deck if cards,
Bright: a water bottle,
Bright: three bubblegums, to apple, one sour cherry,
Bright: a regular bubblegums,
All N: a queen of diamonds.

Elections are pretty crazy here. Crazier are the implications of the two/queen of diamonds cards I received.  You know, if you believe in signs.

Exercise

I'm starting this thing where I try and work out three times a week (it's true. You can check my iCal), but since I don't have actual workout clothes on today I'm just walking around on the elevated track. Everyone here is running clockwise... I wonder if people in the southern hemisphere run counter-clockwise.

9-12-9 Haiku

You've kept my heart beating until now,
But your life support is merely artificial.
If I unplug, will my pulse still thrive?

I'm ready to return my testicles now.

I know it's really stupid to whine about not being included in things when you're sitting out on the sidelines, but sometimes you just can't help but feel like people wouldn't notice at all whether you were there or not.

This is particularly true when you quietly slip out to the sidelines on your already-outnumbered Ultimate Frisbee team and they go on without even acknowledging that you've left. And I know that this could be for any number of reasons. Maybe it's because only a handful of the people on my team know my name. Maybe that's because I haven't really made an impression on them yet. And maybe that's because I walked out to the sidelines in quiet self-pity.

But that's really the catch-22 of meeting new people: you have to have a hook if you want them to notice you, and the best way to have a hook is to either be talented at something that they're interested in, or to know the people around you.

I like to think that I can make friends easily. To the best of my knowledge, I'm personable, I maintain good hygiene, and I'm not a complete idiot... But it's been three weeks already and I eat most of my meals alone. Even my high school friends seem to have already found others to hang out with. Not that I can blame them, they've been here for a semester already.

I really wonder what it is that I have to do differently. Should I not expect these things within the first month? Is there some kind of secret handshake I haven't learned yet? Should there BE a secret handshake? Or am I just not as personable as I thought I was?

There's a rock climbing wall in the ridiculously large gym on campus. I was thinking of paying the $20 for the certification course that would let me climb whenever I wanted. I think it would be good exercise for me.

And then God might let me keep my testicles...

Mid-lecture thought

Do you ever stand up after a little while, feel a small moist spot in your underpants, and then wonder to yourself if you were accidentally thinking of pornography?

Two revelations

Two revelations

1: People caught in the shower during a fire drill are at the biggest disadvantage in the winter. People who are caught barefoot and shirtless are at the second-biggest.

2: To keep your facility safe from drunken tardbags, all you need to do is label your push/pull door with the opposite force required to open it.

Today

The dining halls are open now, and so I ate with a guy on my floor and his female friends. I'm reminded of my modestly awesome people skills at breakfast when I am able to get along with all of them fairly easily. Corey, Devin, Mindy, and Megan all seem like good people, and I've remembered all of their names, so I'm likely to be in the clear with them, friendwise. Mindy especially reminds me of somebody I know from Doane, if only because I talked to her while she had half a voice.

Anyway, I'm sitting in my first, umm, building as I write this. Unfortunately, the only wireless points within range won't accept my iPod and so I can't post this right now. Class starts in roughly twenty minutes, followed promptly (and efficiently) by German, which is pretty close to the student union, two blocks down. I made the walk from the outside of this building to the outside of that building in seven and a half minutes, but I don't know exactly where to find the all-important classROOM. In any case, this is all very exciting for me.

But I still need to find a way to my appointment at 1:00 today...

Which was a bust. I had to call and cancel because there was no way I would make the bus (which would have only taken me within a mile). Then I went ahead and made sure my current class was where I thought it was, based on events which I partially vlogged, and am currently sitting in the lab during break, which is now over.

So my classes don't seem too bad overall, but I still have two new ones to go to on Tuesday. So far, German is the only class that scares me, which is good, because I feel like there's enough for me to be scared about. My room is ice cold... hypothermia.