Public Journal No. 1

How SOPA can save us from migrant workers and mediocrity

2012-01-28T23:00:00.002-06:00

***SARCASM AHEAD***

Okay, so, I was originally staunchly opposed to SOPA from hearing about how it could give copyright holders the power to force Internet providers to block access to websites with infringing content without due process. I use a lot of knowledge and information in my attempts to sound smart, so I tend to like the free distribution of knowledge and information. One thing leads to another and you end up with a Josh who really wants to keep SOPA and PIPA from passing.

Then, Wikipedia went down in protest of SOPA. And Twitter exploded. But it didn't explode in the fun way (where it looks all cool from far away and then candy starts raining down on everyone). No. It exploded in one of the most flagrant demonstrations of collective human stupidity ever.

If you're too tired to click the link (I understand. You had a rough night), it is the Twitter feed of somebody who, for the whole of January 18, simply retweeted people's snippets of outrage, confusion, hopelessness, and despair over the fact that Wikipedia -- which seems to have been the only source of information these people had -- was down. Some of them had no idea why it was down. Some of them had no idea for how long it would be down. Some of them thought it was down because of a law that Congress had already passed. And some of them thought this law that was already passed was for the express purpose of taking down Wikipedia. I can only assume that these people are from a parallel universe where absolutely no thoughts can be expressed in more than 140 or 160 characters (depending on whether you're on Twitter or your cell phone), because Wikipedia's homepage curtly answered all of these questions. I theorize this, because "history" is the last word you will read in the first 140 characters of that page.

The most depressing fact of this all is that Herpderpedia only chronicled 400 tweets. I haven't scoured the list for repeat offenders, but assuming there aren't any, then this is just the voice of 400 Twitter users. Imagine how many more there were on Twitter who went unheard, or how many there were who don't have Twitter accounts.

The existence of Herpderpedia proves that we are a nation with no shortage of complete idiots. And yet, we have so many people who seem to be unable to find work, who are reportedly overqualified for menial tasks, and who go to school, wrongfully passing their classes by wide margins because of a broken school system that lets them believe they've succeeded at something, when they haven't done the slightest amount of actual work.

So I will posit this here: Maybe we're better off without Wikipedia. Sure, it settles countless arguments about who wrote what and when and under the influence of which mistress/substance, but it also takes the legwork out of it. Nobody is going to synthesize their own theories about, say, Brave New World if the most compelling arguments on it are handed out to anyone with wi-fi. We learn the most when we have to pay attention to what it is we're seeing, and apparently Wikipedia is leading (or contributing, is the more likely case) to a system where people cease to tangentially absorb information and instead zero in on the facts that are presumed the most pertinent.

And in this sort of society, I think it's safe to say that nobody is truly learning anything. So why treat them like they are? Does anybody remember what we did with people who didn't learn things, back in the days before the Internet? We had them repair our cars. We bought our hamburgers from them. They were the ones who grew crops. And it worked!

So yeah, censoring the Internet may sound like a really scary thing to us, because we're smart enough to know that the Internet has a lot of meaningful uses, but if breaking down the Internet has the side effect of scraping all of this out of my educated workforce, I think it just might be doing something right.

How Microsoft could increase WP7 market share

2012-01-16T15:27:00.000-06:00

I got an iPhone 4S shortly after it released in October, and I have been incredibly happy with it thus far. It loads applications in a jiffy, I can take calls on it without incident or hassle, it hasn't experienced a kernel panic ever, and all around it responds in a fluid and timely manner to my commands. This all sounds like it belongs in the realm of the utterly mundane, but you should understand, I had a Motorola Droid before this. That entails a lot of things, so let me simplify my gripes as quickly as I can: take everything I said about my iPhone and use an extreme opposite for my old Droid.

But although things are wonderful and easy-going in my new Apple-centric mobile life, in the past few months I was exposed to an HTML5 demo of Windows Phone 7's operating system, and since then I've experienced an overflow of OS envy.

If you're on a smartphone, try the demo for yourself (note that it doesn't work nearly as well on Android devices as on other hardware). If not, take my word that the amount of polish and utility shown off in WP7 is staggering, especially when you consider that this is the same company that brought us Windows Millennium Edition, Vista, and Windows Mobile 6. The concept of the People Hub alone is so magnificent that I'm astonished that this kind of social aggregation hasn't been done before. Really, if our phone is meant to connect us, then why force compartmentalization onto our interactions with people?

The problem, though, is that despite the amazing potential Windows Phone 7 has to redefine our notion of the mobile OS, it is caught in the awful position of being a very late follow-up to the most maligned and stagnant operating system in phone history. It also comes into the game years after iOS and Android, meaning that it's facing an uphill battle of numbers, both in terms of users exposed to its charms, and in the number of devices on sale from the opposing forces.

Microsoft knows this, and that's why they made the web-based demo I linked to up above. The problem is, I checked out the demo on my brand new iPhone, and I'm willing to bet that plenty of other people looked at it on their new iDevice, or their RAZR or Galaxy S. They're already on board with someone else, so what good is this web demo to them?

Let's go back in my own life to the summer of 2007. I was just starting my sophomore year of college, the original iPhone hadn't been out for even a year, I was carrying a plastic, clamshell Samsung device -- which didn't even have unlimited texting -- in my pocket, and the only time I could do anything on the Internet was when I was in front of an archaic device known as a "personal computer". Then Apple came out with the iPod Touch, described by pundits as an "iPhone without the phone". I got one, and within the month it completely changed my life. Suddenly, I had a fully-fledged gateway to the world wide web in the palm of my hand; less cumbersome than my Nintendo DS, and having far more real world applications. It was the perfect companion to my Samsung phone: Now, I had a device that was, for all purposes, my personal data assistant.

It was years from that point until I finally got a smartphone in my Droid, but even after getting the Droid my iPod Touch was a staple of my pockets. Having the ability to use an iOS device for the things that were either too cumbersome or simply impossible on my Droid was too useful to give up.

And now that I see the strength of Windows Phone 7 I'm left asking: why isn't there anything like the iPod Touch, but running the Windows Phone 7 operating system? The iPod Touch is integral to the success of iOS in the mobile ecosystem because it gives Apple access to a market segment that Android and Blackberry don't even touch: non-smartphone owners. I have one coworker and multiple friends who still own either the most basic of cell phones, or a feature phone, because of any number of reasons. Maybe a data plan is too expensive, maybe they like how their current phone works just fine, maybe they're overwhelmed by how quickly new smartphones are released, or maybe don't want to be locked into a multi-year contract. Whatever the reason, they have opted not to get a new phone, and that means they stand almost no chance of being exposed to the Android or Blackberry ecosystem.

But what's this? A device that doesn't come with a contract? It uses wi-fi to access the Internet? It's smaller than my wallet, and I can play games and check Facebook on it? It has a built in camera for photos and video? I can carry all of my music with me? And it's only $200? With far less commitment on the user's end, Apple has just sold another iOS device, and the user can keep everything they love about their old phone.

Windows Phone 7 has just as much opportunity to get new users, and it needs new users. I'm willing to bet that there's plenty of demand for a new device running Mango (aka Windows Phone 7.5) as a direct competitor to the iPod Touch. Heck, I'd be one of the first in line for it, as long as it ran on these few guidelines:

It needs to run the shiniest new version of Windows Phone 7 and be eligible for the exact same updates as any other phone released in the time frame. If the non-phone device isn't a gateway through which users can look and say, "Wow, this must be even better on phones", Microsoft will lose any upselling power it might get from this class of device.
It has to be cheaper than the iPod Touch. Sell it at a nice, digestible price point like $150. Even if this number results in a net loss on hardware sales, increasing the user base will directly increase the number of sales made in the app marketplace, which will lead to more developer interest, which will lead to more apps, which will lead to even more user interest.
It has to integrate into the user's environment. If the device is complicated to set up, then it won't do well. It should be as easy as possible for users to get content between their device and their computer, be it through iTunes, Zune, Windows Media Player, Winamp, or whatever else they use. Windows Phone 7 is all about simplicity and interconnectedness; if that philosophy isn't maintained throughout the entire experience, then it might as well not exist.

It should be obvious to anybody by now that I really want to see Windows Phone 7 succeed. That may sound really weird, especially considering that I have an iPhone, an iPad, and an iMac at home, but here's the thing: It's a damn good mobile platform. Let alone how I feel about the history of Windows desktops, Windows 8, and any tablets that may come out for that. Windows Phone 7 is an original idea with fantastic implementation, and if it dies out then we can all look forward to a total lack of innovation for smartphones in the near future.

Thanks for reading!

Mystery Stalker

2012-01-11T23:57:00.003-06:00

Is the name of the achievement I just unlocked in Batman: Arkham City.

Okay...

2012-01-11T00:40:00.001-06:00

It seems I haven't given ABC a fair shake. Pushing Daisies was... Quite charming.

Social networks and sociability

2012-01-03T14:05:00.000-06:00

At the end of last year, I made a crucial decision for my own mental health and left Facebook. The general atmosphere toward me within Lincoln was slanderous, threatening, and exclusionary, and my continued presence on the social network resulted in my feeling ironically detached, unwelcome, and downright unloved.

Since my profile still has relevant contact information on my info page, though, I decided not to delete my profile and instead just scramble my password and delete all saved instances of it from the computers I had previously logged in on. I haven't received any text messages or IMs from any Facebook friends yet, but I figure that if it's really important that they get in touch with me, they'll make the effort. If they don't try to get in touch, well, then it obviously shouldn't concern me.

Obviously, I miss some of the interactions I had on the site, but I do have to admit that my life has felt a lot more serene since abandoning it. And, as it turns out, I'm not the only person to discover that Facebook has a negative impact on mood. Daniel Gulati of Huffington Post wrote an article outlining some of the ways in which prolonged activity on Facebook reduces the perceived meaningfulness of our days. In addition to driving us from close relationships to online correspondence, Gulati notes that Facebook is a place where people spend more time writing about their achievements and milestones than their shortcomings. He writes, "Accomplishments like, 'Hey, I just got promoted!' or 'Take a look at my new sports car' trump sharing the intricacies of our daily commute or a life-shattering divorce." Some people react to such announcements by feeling a need to one-up the accomplishment, creating an environment of competition and self-evaluation that has users comparing their successes to the success of others. So really, anyone who has Bill Gates as a friend on Facebook is entirely setting themselves up for disappointment.

Additionally, Facebook takes us out of the "now" of our own lives so that we can read about everything that's happening with our friends. "My interviewees regularly accessed Facebook from the office," Gulati writes, "at home through their iPads and while out shopping on their smartphones." When people do this, they're less engaged with the tasks they ought to be focused on, which leads to less efficiency, less awareness of their surroundings, and a lower sense of accomplishment on finished tasks.

Granted, not a whole lot of the depressors in Gulati's article apply to the scenario that had me leave Facebook, but it is a small comfort to know that there are legitimate other dangers to spending your life on the Internet. Who knows? Maybe a few of my other Facebook friends will realize this and abandon their own profiles in favor of conversation over a nice lunch.

"Facebook Is Making Us Miserable", Daniel Gulati - Huffington Post

Auld Lang Syne, indeed.

2012-01-02T13:43:00.002-06:00

I was acquainting myself with the Blogger iOS app earlier today when I tapped on the last post I had written for this blog. Now I know that doing this immediately puts that post into a "draft" state and will likely avoid doing it again for... at least six hours. But as I loaded that post, I got a glimpse of where I stood almost an entire year ago, and I realized something: 2011 was, through and through, the worst year of my life.

The problems I wrote about a year ago all remained almost entirely stagnant for months, and beyond them, more problems arose. In the past year I was prescribed antidepressants, lost my best friend over a very stupid argument, fought and lost against an enormous wave of malice and cruelty from people I truly cared about, struggled against feelings of isolation and despair, gained twenty pounds and a very unflattering gut, contemplated suicide on several occasions, and told just about all of this to a therapist with whom I meet two to three times a month. The worst of it is the hatred... I haven't cried so much since elementary school, and just like back then, it's not a single event that I'm crying about; I'm crying because there are people in my life who actually want me to be in pain, people who might be reading this right now and smiling about their accomplishment.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that I regarded my life with futility at least once a week this last year. But then, I'm still standing, and I have to credit the new friends I made in 2011 for seeing me through the difficult times. David, Nick, and Clint all stood by me, even when I would reiterate all of the problems I'd already told them about ad nauseam. We started bowling together, we hang out all the time, and I can count on their company to make me smile even in the darkest of places.

And now it's 2012. I've got a job that's on my career path, my student loans are consolidated, I'm teaching myself how to program iPhone apps, and my resolution is to publish something on the app store.

A few days ago, somebody called me an optimist, which really struck me, especially because on New Year's Eve, Nick asked me to think of a positive memory from my childhood, and I just shrugged, because I couldn't come up with anything. I have incredible hope for the future, and a good amount of hope for the year to come. I suppose I'm an optimist of the future, and a pessimist of the past. But in fairness, the past is done with. Dwelling on it too much can make you wish for things you can't get back.

Should old acquaintance be forgot. Here's to tomorrow.

You should just trust me when I say that I'm all kinds of messed up.

2011-01-28T23:13:00.002-06:00

Seriously. My parents are embroiled in something like a 30-year marriage that's been completely loveless for as far back as I can remember, and they've conditioned me to feel subconsciously that there is no truth to a happy ending, even though I want one more than anything in the world. When I'm dating somebody and things are going well, I'm ensnared by the fear that for no perceptible reason it will all end and there'll be nothing I can do about it.

I'm in love with an ex who consistently tells me he doesn't feel the same way anymore, yet I rely so much on the time we spend with each other now, even though it felt like I was just going through the motions when I spent time with him while we went out. A good number of days I feel shattered because I don't have him anymore, I even dream about him half of my nights, and at the same time I know that I'd just go back to taking him for granted if we got back together. And I like that he's able to be his own person now, but if he were to fall in love again... it'd kill me.

I almost completely hate where I live and want to move to a bigger city, but I'm horrible at meeting new people, and I seem to repel people from asking me to go out, so if I were to do that there's no guarantee that I'd meet anybody new, and then I would have given up the few good friends I already had for nothing.

...I wish I weren't afraid of so much. I wish I had a different childhood. I wish I could've loved you when I had the chance.

EDIT: This song came on literally as I clicked post. Talk about providence.

The Hardest Part of Buying a Mac

2010-12-10T13:42:00.000-06:00

When I was in high school, I had a laptop. It was the first computer in our family to have Windows XP. Up until then, we’d had Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and Windows Millennium Edition on family computers. My family was never raised around anything different, least of all Macs. Nobody we ever knew had used Macs. At all. I guess it’s just the result of being in smaller communities my whole life, but that’s how it goes. The only time we were ever exposed to Macs were in quick 30-second shots of them on commercials, and my Dad would always change the channel when they came on. Not Mac commercials, I mean. Commercials, period. He hated all commercials, not just the ones for Macs. There was honestly a large part of my childhood where I wasn’t aware Macs existed at all. Everyone was a PC. Everyone...

Then the 1999 iMac came out, bursting onto the scene with its garish purple pinstripe design, its forsaking of the traditional “tower”, and its minimal number of cords. A power cord, a phone line, and a keyboard and mouse? What about the sound cables? What about the cable that connects the monitor? What about the 32-pin printer cable? Wait, you’re saying the printer uses the same slot that the keyboard and mouse use? Wait, you’re saying the keyboard and mouse use the same slots? And where’s the floppy drive? I’ve gotta have a floppy drive! This whole business is preposterous! It’s an abomination! PC society won’t stand for this!

In high school, as the iPod was gaining tractions, my friends and I would talk before classes about how dumb anyone would be to want to own a Mac. It couldn’t play games, and it was weird, I mean, no right-click? How could anybody like that? It was entirely weird, and nobody in their right mind could possibly think that it was a sensible way of using a computer. Seriously, it doesn’t have a right-mouse button. That’s just wrong.

Then I got brought in on my high school newspaper staff, and the walls came down. The entire journalism lab was nothing but iMacs. Every single computer, lacking a tower. Every single computer, without a right mouse button. I had no idea how to react. It was a world that worked entirely differently than the one I had known before. I didn’t know how to react to it. So, naturally, I explored the more accessible parts and then railed against them for not being like Windows. I have to hold down the control button to right-click? There’s only one menubar at the top of the screen? All of the keyboard shortcuts are handled through the button with the apple on it? I hate this all, it’s so unlike the world I came from.

On a completely different note, I was in debate class since I was a freshman. If my utter fall into academic mediocrity can be traced back to anything, it’s that class, and its GPA-crushing curve. It was also, not surprisingly, one of my least favorite classes. The topics we had to prepare cases for were decided upon by some faraway consortium and argued in a style called Lincoln-Douglas. Why? Who knows. The debates were incredibly stuffy and nobody in the class ever truly cared about the topics we were given, so we never talked about them (I mentioned this class crushed my GPA?). What we did end up talking about was truly the most nefarious topic of any we could consider in the Nebraskan suburb: gay rights.

Now, there were a lot of kids in this debate class, and new ones cycled in every year, but for as many times as I can remember having an argument on gay rights, memory pushes me into a one-versus-many war of ideas. That’s probably hyperbole, but honestly, I felt entirely outnumbered in those arguments. It didn’t matter, though. I knew, no matter what those kids said, that they were wrong. Homosexuality was a sin, and it didn’t deserve the same rights as a normal lifestyle.

They kept saying my ideas were “unfounded”, but that’s ridiculous. My ideas were founded in my childhood, in my upbringing. My family was brought up by the military; For as long as my brother, myself, or my sister had been alive, my dad’s job dictated where we lived. All of our schooling up until middle school was literally on a military base. Almost all of our friends were in the exact same position, and heck, none of us knew any gay people. We knew what the word meant, sure, but to know an actual gay person? That’d be crazy. Not that we’d want to, I mean, if talk on the playground was true, then having a gay friend made you gay, too.

The only time we were ever exposed to homosexuality was on TV or in the movies, and then it was only talked about briefly and in jokes before you would move on to another topic. As a family, we didn’t know any gay people… Well, I guess that isn’t entirely true. My mom and dad knew that one of my aunts was gay long before any of us kids knew; she was married to a man later described to me as “handsome” and “rich,” and then she left him. Honestly, if my debate friends didn’t know homosexuality was a sin, they should have after learning that it caused women to leave their husbands who were handsome and rich. But I didn’t know about her until much later than that incident. The first gay person that I really knew was my uncle. A similar story: he met a woman and proposed to her (on Oprah [clue one]), then after a few short years of matrimonial bliss, he left her for reasons my parents weren’t willing to mention. Then he got a roommate, Scott. And suddenly that was all nobody talked about. I heard the word from my brother, from my mom I heard – in angry tones – talk of my uncle and his “roommate” living in “sin”.

How did I feel about all this? Honestly? Scared. I’d been having gay dreams from when I was twelve, and the constant talk of how my uncle (later also my aunt) were going to Hell for their unrepentant “lifestyle” made me fear for my own soul. Was I just that bad to keep having the dreams? To keep looking at men? My brother, through a hilarious incident involving a browser history that I won’t get into, was the first to find out. It was our secret, and so was the therapist he would take me to on several occasions to try and get better.

Lyle was a really nice guy. What you’ve probably heard about ex-gay ministries was so wholly unlike my experience. All we did those sessions was talk; talk about how things were going, talk about how I was feeling that session, talk about my childhood, about my father who – while he was certainly there in a physical sense – Lyle would assure me was not there emotionally, talk about my mother who – while she was certainly caring – Lyle would assure me was overbearing. And I’m not going to say he was wrong. Was my dad distant? Yeah, like Alaska. Was my mom overbearing? Yeah, like wearing two parkas in Alaska. But in spite of us figuring that all out and talking through it, I didn’t really feel any less gay from our talks. Maybe he was doing it wrong.

I had my first kiss when I was nearly 18. It was with a guy named Stephen. He was a Mac. It was wetter than I had expected, but it was a lot of fun. Shortly after that I got a boyfriend, kept in complete secrecy from my parents, my friends, my teachers, and Myspace, which was easy because he lived two hours away. Of course, after a long chain of hilarious events – starting with a not-so-hilarious suicide on the other side of town – I came out. First to my friends, then to my drama teacher, then to my mom, then to my parents. Never to Myspace, though, that site was already gay enough, am I right?

Thanks to journalism, I was also experiencing the Mac side of life. So, the command button is much closer to the other buttons, which makes your hand cramp less by using shortcuts. And the main browser is faster than the one on my PC at home. And you can see all of your open projects with just one button. And its control-alt-delete equivalent actually closes programs that have frozen. Okay, using a Mac isn’t as bad or as problematic as I thought it was gonna be, in fact, it’s pretty fun. But it still can’t play games!

Well, my parents had me see Lyle one last time, after my brother told them about him. At this final visit, he asked me if changing was something I really wanted for myself. I told him that honestly, no, it wasn’t. I liked who I was, and for now it wasn’t really the core “problem” in my life.

When I graduated in May, my extended family got me a total of about $1,000. I wasn’t allowed to come out to any family members at my graduation. That summer, Apple made some important changes to their operating system that let you run Windows on a Mac. In September, I bought the iMac that sits on my desk to this day (I installed Windows on it, but as time went on I used Windows less and less). I also fell in love for the first time and had the epiphany, however late, that being gay was no more a sin than buying Apple.

There’s this joke my friends make: “The hardest part of buying a Mac is telling your dad that you’re gay.” I think it’s pretty funny; I also think it’s backwards. The best part of telling your dad that you’re gay is deciding to buy a Mac.

What I’m really getting at with all this, is if you need any help with your computer or with being gay… I charge $20 for either.

Point, counterpoint (I will continue until it is dead, part two)

2010-04-30T19:21:00.001-05:00

That's really not an accurate comparison by tossing out numbers like that. Part of the iPad's power is the operating system, which is refined so that the most processing power can be made out of it. The 1.5 GHz computer you had likely ran Windows XP, which spent more computing power to run the OS than the programs. It also had all of the hardware you outlined above, which requires processing power to physically run, including thermometers, fans, and the spinning motors in the DVD drive. Battery life for laptops around then were between 3 and 4 hours--iPad is over 10. I'm also guessing your laptop wasn't $500, since the net book craze wasn't around then.

I've had an iPad since after the day is came out, and I adore it. It's far easier to bring places in public and write. Games are a ton of fun on it, and it has a gorgeous screen for watching video. It's only 1024x768, but that still includes 720p which is an HD aspect. (People seem to have no problem with their 46" flat screen TVs only reaching 1080p, which is a resolution far smaller computer monitors surpassed many, many years ago.) The screen is only 9.7", so to have a deeper resolution wouldn't really be conducive on the eyes, since text and details in general would be too small.

The iPad is a premium product, not meant to replace a more fully loaded computer, and certainly not worth all of the anger so many people seem to have with its existence. ;)

Reducing the number of applications you can have open and onscreen at a time to "one" is not a refinement. Windows 3.1 could do that quite well. The improved battery life is entirely reliant on the fact that there are no moving parts to the iPad, and there are no (sorry, iCultists. I'm sure you know I mean to say "few") background processes allowed. Yes, my laptop had a shorter battery life because it was able to have concurrent processes, but guess what? being able to watch my physical copy of Wayne's World and IM my friends at the same time was something I *liked* being able to do.

Writing in public on the iPad is also categorically harder than on a laptop, because the keyboard is on the same plane as the screen, meaning that in order to have a workable typing angle you need to have the device at some intermediary angle so that you can see the screen and make sure that your wrists aren't bent at a ridiculous, straining angle. Or, maybe you still fancy the two-plane system and decide to buy the keyboard dock. Congratulations, you just paid extra for an implement that has come with every other personal computer ever. Incidentally, I hear they're coming out with a car that has an optional steering wheel; in order to drive without it, you gesture violently in the direction you want to go and pray to Xerxes that it all comes out alright.

Saying that the iPad has a 720p screen is also a huge steaming pile of half-truth. Yes, it has more than 720 lines of vertical resolution and, yes, all of those lines refresh simultaneously, but any signal transmitted at 720p is always, always, always going to be in widescreen, vis a vis, NOT proportioned to fit your 1024x768 iPad screen. The brilliance of a 1080p TV screen isn't the number of pixels the human eye is picking up, it's in the number of pixels the hardware from which your TV is receiving its signal is sending. Consider the amount of data in a 640x480 broadcast of any half-hour or hour-long show. If you need help doing that, iTunes has plenty of them in standard definition for you to peruse, and you'll see that it's actually a considerable amount of data. Even when the stream is sent as interlaced, and only half of the data is necessary, it's still a lot. Now find something on iTunes that's in 1080p and OH CHRIST HOW ARE WE STREAMING HUNDREDS OF CHANNELS OF THIS NATIONWIDE AROUND THE CLOCK should be your default response, because if all that data were carbon dioxide, Al Gore would never stop crying. Finally, saying it would be a bad idea to have a higher resolution on that small a screen is crap; my Droid actually has a slightly smaller screen than my iPod Touch, but it has over double the resolution, and wouldn't you know it? Things look bloody fantastic when they're that sharp.

You're absolutely right when you say that the iPad is a premium product, and you're absolutely right again when you say it's not meant to replace a more fully-loaded computer. I wouldn't even use it to replace a less loaded computer, but truth be told, I'm not mad at the iPad, not really. To be mad at an inert object - be it a brick, a wall of bricks, an iPad, or a wall of iPads - belies the intelligence on the angry person's part. I'm mad at the overbearingly huge swath of the world population that's convinced that the iPad is better, more practical, or more even prettier than any computer that bears the pre/suffix "mac". The iPad's OS is an offshoot of an offshoot of OSX, and as such, is capable of doing absolutely no more than any computer equipped with OSX Leopard or Snow Leopard would be capable of doing. Absolutely any app made for either the iPhone or the iPad could run on a Mac as is, and there would be no complications. If the thousands of developers who have made half-baked iPhone apps would step up and create half as many apps for the Mac proper, there might not be the stigma that Macs are less capable than Windows computers. Hell, the programmers wouldn't even have to go through the ridiculous approval process if they went that route.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to graft a capacitive touch screen to my iMac, take it to a bar with me, get drunk and leave it there, and then sue the idiot who picks it up for millions.

I will continue until it is dead.

2010-04-26T01:45:00.000-05:00

I got a laptop six years ago, with a 1.5GHz processor, a 32 GB hard drive, 512 MB of RAM, a 64 MB video card, an 802.11g wireless card, a DVD-ROM drive, an ethernet port, a video out port, two USB ports, and a FireWire 400 port. That was six years ago.

The iPad has a 1GHz processor, an unknown quantity of RAM (but I'm willing to bet it's not more than 512 MB), integrated video, an 802.11n wireless card, no DVD-ROM, no ethernet, no video out, no USB, no FireWire, and it can come with 32 GB, but it'll cost extra. The iPad also has a 1024x768 screen, just like my six year old laptop.

The iPad, however, does not have a replaceable hard drive. It does not have an expandable RAM slot. It does not have the ability to run two, or three, or five applications side-by-side. You can get a keyboard for it, but that will cost extra. You can not change its operating system, unless Apple does it for you. You can not change its battery, unless Apple does it for you. You can not install any applications on it that Apple hasn't told you that you can install on it. The iPad is six years newer than my laptop, and in all that time, the greatest advancement in computational hardware that anybody can claim the iPad has over a mid-range laptop from 2004… is a faster wireless card.

Excuse me if I don't start to foam at the mouth at this $500 insult to Moore's Law.

A short story what I did for class Wednesday

2010-01-21T17:03:00.003-06:00

The Dark

Neither of them could see a thing. There was hardly any room to move, and zero light. In spite of that, both could tell that they were tethered to the walls, possibly to each other? It didn’t matter. They were stuck there with no hope of escape.

It seemed whoever had done this to them was a sadist, at the least. Apart from being tied down, their bodies had so little freedom of motion that they typically remained with their hands fixed on their knees. Sometimes, the stillness sat on their muscles to the point of agony, and one of them would thrash his legs for a few seconds if only to try and appease his nerves. They were fed at irregular intervals; sometimes the meals came almost immediately after the other, sometimes they had to wait half a day before they got anything.

Mostly, though, what consumed them were the intense, vivid effects of their sensory deprivation: illusions, shadows, visions... sometimes they felt even like other peoples’ memories were treating their minds like a premium vacation getaway.

Both of them had long since given up hope of escape. Even if they could get out, either one of them knew he had no idea where he’d go, what he’d do, or if there was even a life still waiting for him on the other side. Besides, they were both naked, wet, and all but completely feeble from their stasis.

It seemed like whoever put them in this place wanted them to hate each other. Every subtle movement one of them made, the other one felt. One couldn’t even turn his head without rubbing against the other. Their worst hells were an inch away from them every second of the day.

“I hate you,” one of them said.

“I hate you more,” the other shot back.

That was the most either said for a while, and then one asked, because the sound was better than the silence, “How long have you been here?”

“I don’t know,” the other replied. “I don’t think more than a few months, counting the meals.” He was completely guessing; even if the people keeping them there were benevolent enough to feed them three times a day, every day, he’d lost count long ago of the number of times he’d gotten food.

“It feels like I’ve been here forever... what’s your name?” The first asked.

“Why the hell do you care?”

“I was just wondering if you had one, alright? At least something to attach humanity to either of us.”

The one hadn’t thought of that. He honestly didn’t know what his name might have been, but figured he should give his cellmate an answer. “Gene.”

“Gene, huh? Call me Ted.”

“Great. So glad I finally know how to address the most annoying thing ever. Are we best friends yet?”

“Alright, fine. If you don’t want to talk, we can just go back to the hallucinations,” Ted said. Gene was completely silent for a couple of seconds, then groaned in exasperation. “Fine, what do you want to know?”

Ted rolled the thoughts in his brain around until a question fell out, “Do you remember anything before this?”

“I don’t know,” Gene replied. “I guess, maybe. But it’s hard to say.”

“I remember things, but I don’t know if they really happened. There’s a lot of guns, bombs, people dying. Murders, monsters bigger than trees, and a lot of red – I don’t want to see any more of that,” Ted confessed.

“I haven’t had anything like that,” Gene said. “I can understand why you’d want to talk... did you do any of that?”

“I don’t know. I really hope not.” Ted had wondered before if the blood spilled in any of the things he’d seen was on his hands. Maybe it was why he was here now.

“I see people, but there’s usually not red. People watching men run a ball up and down a field, a woman vomiting once or twice, men hugging, men kissing, men —” Gene trailed off, then slowly said, “There’s never men kissing women.”

Ted considered that. “I wonder what that means.”

Gene was going to say something more, but with as much warning as a car gives before it tears out of a back alley, Ted was ejected from the room by some force neither of them had known was even there. The tactile sensation of the experience only worked to heighten the point that he was now alone.

"Ted?" Gene paused, “Ted?” Ted wasn’t getting back to him. Gene waited, but nothing more happened.

For about a minute, the feeling manifested itself as solitude. But then the empty space began to itch at him. The air felt arid. The thoughts in his head churned thick and slow like curdling milk. Where did Ted go? Who took him away? Is he dead now? Is he worse than dead? But most importantly, what was going to happen to Gene now?

Something like a hand wrapped around Gene’s feet, and slowly Gene felt it creep up his body like strangling vines. And then Gene felt himself being pressed down to meet the pit.

“What’s happening? Ted? What’s going on?” Gene’s pulse elevated as the chasm slowly opened to swallow him. There was nowhere he could turn to get out, the walls began pressing in on him, as if claustrophobia were a malevolent spirit seeking revenge on him.

He sank further and further, and the walls continued to collapse around him. Thoughts barreled through his head faster than he could sort them out. His heart beat in tempo with the thoughts and the frenzy within him made him want to fight, but the only thing still outside of the maw was his head. He wanted to scream but he couldn’t.

And after what felt like an eternity of this panicked state his entire body was constricted by the walls of the tunnel. The pressure on and in his body was unbearable. There was nothing he could do, and the images he’d seen all before were bullets firing through his brain. The people, the places, the events; surely they were his sins, surely this was his judgment. He was being consumed by the transgressions he’d brought upon the others in his life. Hell had literally begun to swallow him.

His feet were engulfed by a devastating cold. In the matter of an instant, it felt like they were being assaulted with frostbite, and the cold, like the pit, crept up Gene’s body, one extreme to another.

All thought had began expelling itself from Gene’s mind. The only things he could concentrate on were the sensations, torturing him. One by one, each of the memories he’d been given passed back through his mind and then flew away from his conscious mind on angel’s wings. Then his memory of the place itself, the walls, and the one he’d shared the horror with; each one suddenly eradicated by the trauma of the motion.

Surrounded by a cold he’d never known before, Gene could do only one thing: cry. A hand he couldn’t see cut him free of his tether; the world was a shroud of white light, a colossus stood over Gene as he continued his wails.

A pair of giant hands wrapped a blanket around Gene, and then rocked him for a moment until the fear, pain, and cold were as faraway as the dark room.

Somewhere, a voice said, as Gene quieted, “Congratulations, ma’am,” and Gene slept.

New blog design

2010-01-06T03:11:00.000-06:00

I know I haven't updated this blog in a good long while with anything meaningful, but nothing in this world has too much meaning, so EFF YOU.

I'm sorry, that was uncalled for. Anyway, this is just to point out what you've already noticed: this blog has taken on a new design. It has some eccentricities, for example, my tags totally had to go because of how far down my posts extended from it. Anyway, I think it's pretty stylin', but I might be wrong. Anybody have more elaborate thoughts?

A short poem

2009-12-02T12:39:00.000-06:00

The paper ball
Unfurled
To reveal such
An intricate
Web
Of snot.

An update too long for Twitter or Facebook.

2009-10-07T15:00:00.001-05:00

I discovered today that I'm getting a D in two of my classes. Normally, this is a very bad thing in college, because it means you have too little will to do what you think you want in life in order to actually get anywhere, except that the classes in which I'm performing remedially are about medieval England and oil wells – two subjects which, if I had to be told I could never ever learn about for the rest of my life, I wouldn't particularly miss. The unfortunate business is that these will drive down my GPA and can potentially force me out of my major. And suddenly the irony of liberal arts education becomes blaringly clear.

Anyway, maybe it's not too late to declare pass/fail.

What I'm working out to these days

2009-09-30T23:16:00.003-05:00

This playlist is called "Nerdrenaline" because it's derived (with the exception of Samson and Delilah) completely from video games. Despite that, it's all very pumped stuff and has a pretty solid lifting tempo.

3 Cans Later - Chris Geehan - Iji
Welcome To the Party, Pal
For Stronger Bones
Seven Four
Tor
Face to Face - Tom Mauritzon - Iji
Hero (Wretched8 Remix) - Captain Goodnight - Iji
Further (Lifeforce cover) - VNV Nation - Iji
Mega Man 3: Magnet Man and Top Man - Entertainment System
Escape From The City - Jun Senoue - Sonic Adventure 2
Samson and Delilah - Shirley Manson - Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Jackknife - Solar Winds - Mirror's Edge
Ropeburn
Pirandello Kruger
Boat
Fighting For Freedom - Takehiru Ishimoto - The World Ends With You
Shibuya
Kinetic Harvest- Sidhe - Shatter
Aurora
Granular Extractor
Krypton Garden
Amethyst Caverns
Neon Mines
Xenon Home World
Boss Music

Enjoy.

Conundrum

2009-07-05T00:47:00.001-05:00

Why is it that we stop caring what time it is only after it's already gotten ridiculously late? I wanted to get to bed forty minutes ago but I didn't, and now I don't want to go to bed even though I really should.

I'm renaming my internal clock Keyser Soze.

Hey life... ya done yet?

2009-07-03T00:33:00.000-05:00

Cute. What are you looking for?

Mostly friends, but play's alright every once in a while. I'm open-minded in that area. How about you?

I don't "play," and I avoid those who do. It's not my thing.

Well, those who play tend to avoid me, but ... so does anyone I wish would just date me. So I guess that's that?

I don't hook-up, and I keep clear of those who do. It says a lot about one's character -- or lack thereof.

Yep, there's that final bullet to my self-esteem. Time to listen to Death Cab and concede that 2006 was, in fact, the last year I'd ever have a boyfriend.

I do think you're cute.

Cute but poisonous.

Ok, well take care and good luck finding whatever/whomever you're looking for. So long!

You know what I'm honestly looking for? I want to find a guy who's stuck in the years when Pete and Pete and Are You Afraid of the Dark were still on Nickelodeon. I'm looking for a guy who still has anxiety before he gets onto the big rollercoasters at the theme parks. I'm looking for a guy who remembers what the Super Nintendo was and who will still fight to say it was better than the Sega Genesis even though they both died off 14 years ago. I want somebody who hasn't quite grown up and isn't even sure he wants to.

And to be completely honest, I only mentioned play fleetingly because I had no idea what you might be looking to find on ******. I guess it was just my turn to get caught in a sting.

next time, be honest. you never know who's on the other end. don't tell someone what you "think" he wants to hear because in the end, it might not be what he wants to hear after all.

g'nite.

You'll have to forgive me if I'm not completely gracious toward your pious lesson. I'm honest as often as I can be and it hasn't won me any gratitude, sympathy, or love. And as high on your pedestal as you are, I'm sure it's tough for you to see me crying myself to sleep more nights than most people should.

Douche bag.

Sent from my iPhone

You call me a douche bag when you don't even know my name? I've spent the first year and a half of college shattered over the first guy in my life who's ever been fully compassionate toward me leaving, and I spent the next year and a half trying to recollect myself AGAIN after finally meeting somebody else that I clicked with. I have been spit upon and ignored my entire life by the people who were supposed to be my friends, and by the people who call themselves my family. So yes, sometimes I cave in and go for the opportunity to have a little closeness in my life.

Fine, maybe that makes me damaged, but I am not, nor will you ever have the right to call me, a douche bag.

Author's note: fuck...

Dear Madam Gaga

2009-06-29T00:53:00.001-05:00

In order for something to be an innuendo, it must first be a real thing. This is in reference to the term "Disco Stick." There is no such thing as a disco stick. There has never been a prevalence of sticks in disco culture. I formally declare that your lyrics are stupid.

Sincerely,
The Undersigned.

Sending out an S.O.S.

2009-06-25T00:47:00.001-05:00

I got off of Skype with a friend and started hearing a squeaking in my earbuds. I didn't know what might be the cause, so I didn't know what I should do. Then I started hearing a pattern to the squeaks. They're pulses. They come in clusters separated by about five seconds of silence and groups separated by about one second of silence. I've read about codes like this before in one of my math classes, but it doesn't make any sense to me.

3-2-2
2-2-3
3-3-2
3-2-2
2-2-2-1
1-2
2-1
1-1-1
1-1-4-1
1-1-1-1-1
This cluster is singled out because it doesn't follow the rule of the numbers adding up to 7, 8, or 9.
5-2-1
3-2-2
2-2-2-1
4-2-2
2-2-2-1
2-2-2-1
2-2-2-1
2-2-2-1
2-3-1-1
3-1-2-1
2-1-2-2
2-2-2-1
3-2-1-1
3-3-2
3-3-2
4-3-1
3-4-1
3-3-2
2-3-3
5-3
3-3-2
2-2-2-1
3-2-2
2-2-2-1
3-2-2
5-3
6-3
2-2-2-1
2-2-2-1
2-2-2-1
2-3-2
3-3-2
3-2-2
3-3-2
3-2-1-1

I lost track of them after this point, but they kept going. A friend of mine suggested I restart to see if it was a hardware glitch. So I did, and they stopped, but only after I completed the login sequence.

If anyone knows what sort of code this was, or what sort of code it resembles, can you give me a shout?

Random thought of the night

2009-06-23T01:32:00.001-05:00

I've never been skinny dipping. I wonder how it feels. I was always afraid to take the risk, but what's the risk, really? Can someone tell me?

Blue morning, blue morning, wrapped in strands of fist and bone

2009-06-21T00:03:00.000-05:00

I made a new friend recently. We haven't talked very often, but we've generally talked about things that are a little deeper than surface.

Tonight, I shared a post from this blog with him, and he asked me if I still feel the way I did when I wrote it. I said I do, and then told him that I use the stars as a frame of reference for times like these. See, the stars are fixed in the sky, so compared to them, it's hard to say we're really moving at all. He suggested that I should probably change my reference point if that's not how I wanted to feel. He said that it was important that I be who I feel I am on the inside, no matter what others' opinion of my doing so is.

And the whole thing reminded me a lot of Counting Crows...

"Curiosity, kitten,
Doesn't have to mean youre on your own
You can look outside your window
He doesn't have to know
We can talk awhile, baby
We can take it nice and slow"

And a little later,

"There's a bird that nests inside you
Sleeping underneath your skin
When you open up your wings to speak
I wish you'd let me in"

Of course, I'd always heard "bird that nests" as "perfectness," but either image leads to the wings, and to not having to wander in solitude. If I don't want to live my life closed off from everyone, I shouldn't have to. And if I want to feel like I'm going somewhere, all I have to do is go somewhere.

My new reference point... I think it should be how much I've learned about life.

Whoops

2009-06-18T21:25:00.001-05:00

I meant to write last night but I ended up not. I'll make up for it today.

I think that there are definite signs to be heeded in our daily lives. They can be little things that we don't even realize we're supposed to notice, they can be big things so big that we lose the message of them in the shock of the event happening. Usually they're hidden in the details, and can take a small amount of imagination to uncover. Some people will argue that they don't exist then, but I think that those people choose not to see signs because it's easier to live life without turning your head and looking around. (to their credit, they're right; it is easier to live that way)

It happens often, though, if you're receptive to it. The present structure of the signs tells me that whatever I'm hoping for this summer, it won't happen now. If I try to force the point, it'll just crash in on me.

I want to believe that these signs promise something will develop with the guy that apologized... but that's a very long way out and I shouldn't let my heart beat for a moment that might not ever come.

Tech 'n Talk

2009-06-17T01:09:00.000-05:00

I'm waiting for a lot of things. I'm waiting for summer to be over, I'm waiting for love to find me, I'm waiting for my sister to get out of the shower, and I'm waiting for my real life to begin.

Well, in no more than an estimated 12 hours, I can cross one of the things I've been waiting for off my list. It's been about a year since the last major update to the iPhone OS, and soon Apple will be releasing their next big update: iPhone OS 3.0.

This is really exciting for anybody with an iPhone or iPod Touch because it adds a ton of functionality to the device. The majority of the upgrades are technical features, but they allow for pretty exciting stuff. Push notifications, for instance, allow applications to send updates to your device when there's new content available without the need for that application to be running.

Another huge feature is the ability to cut, copy, and paste text not only within individual apps, but across every app on your device. Got a link in Safari you want to share in Twitter? Done. Got an address you need to send to your dumb friend Gina because she lost the directions to the party? Done. Got a... thing that... needs pasting into... something else? ._.

In other news, my mom called a family discussion about cars and such and the topic arose that the car I used to have was supposed to be my graduation present, given to me a bit earlier than normal. I asked about if my parents had put any thought into what my sister's college graduation present would be, and then made the point that my high school graduation present was a lot smaller than my sister's, so I just wanted to know what hers would be like. My mom contested that my high school graduation present was a laptop and not a $300 MP3 player. I corrected her on this point and made it clear that my graduation present was some $800 than my sister's. After dinner she hugged me, apologized (apologies abound these past ten days), and then said she knew what I meant on the walk last night.

Two humanized people in ten days. Maybe this summer is turning out differently than the last two. Even if just in small amounts, it makes me hopeful for the rest.

What I did today.

2009-06-15T01:35:00.002-05:00

I woke up at noon and then hung out downtown with a friend from high school. We had Panera Bread around 4:30 because I was starving. I had the chipotlé chicken sandwich with no tomato or cheddar. I also had the iced green tea and made a point to ask the girl if there was any dairy in this green tea. Stupid question, I know, but sometimes people put milk in green tea. She said there was no dairy in the green tea, so I was golden. The sandwich was delicious, but shortly after eating it I discovered that there was indeed milk in the chipotlé sauce. I don't regret anything.

I got home around 6:30, and logged on to my computer, was bored to tears until about 12:00, when I started watching a web series called Dorm Life. It's interesting; sort of like The Office if it were set in a college dorm and hopped up on guarana.

Now I'm heading to bed, woot. Goodnight.

EDIT: oh, speaking of woot, I bought a 4GB flash drive off of woot.com today. It was $10 after shipping.

I feel really attuned to this image

2009-06-12T18:25:00.002-05:00

It all started when I got an email from Blizzard...

2009-05-29T01:13:00.003-05:00

They were informing me of a successful character transfer. It was an interesting email to have received, because I haven't played WoW in over a year.

Concerned about whether or not this might reflect on my bank statement, I attempted to log on to worldofwarcraft.com. Indeed, I was unable to log in, so I reset my password by answering my security question, and changed my default email address. And then I looked at my payment summary: Somebody purchased a month, on May 28th. I looked, then, to the subscription plans, which were indeed set to a monthly basis. The good news is that the month was not purchased on my plastic.

Still, mildly concerned about this character transfer business, I called Blizzard support. They told me that my account was hacked. And that there's nothing they can do over the phone about the character transfer.

But...

They did say that I should check my computer for viruses and keyloggers and trojans.

So I did check my Mac for those things...

And found none of those things.

Then, curious to see what else my hacker might have done, I decided to download WoW back on to my computer. The initial download promised to be 6.5 GB. I come back to my computer a little while later, to find that the 11 GB of free space I had left it with... Were all gone. I cleared off my hard drive, and redownloaded. Then I successfully had version 3.0.1. Then the downloader came up. And then the updater came up. And the download/update dance repeated, nine times, until finally, I was able to click "Play" on the launcher.

So I did.

And I signed in.

And was prompted to update, three more times.

But when finally granted the go-ahead to log in and run the actual game, it appeared that it was all for naught.

You see, on the very first installer screen, some eight hours ago, I chose Wrath of the Lich King. Thinking that installing that would let me play my basic account, since they all contain the same data anyway. Apparently... I was wrong. I installed the wrong kind of 15 gigabytes. You know how it takes up that much space? They never optimize their code. Their patches are installed next to one another. Never overwriting the precious base code of the other patches.

You would think, that with all of Blizzard's money and vast nebulous brainsize hive mind knowledge of making the most incredibly immersive video game experiences known to all of mankind, nay, all of Creation, that they would know how to make a unified installer. I was told that my account information was wrong. Back to the website to enter in the same account information. Which was proven on the website to be right.

So now I sit, downloading the right kind of 15 gigabytes. With luck, I'll wake up tomorrow and update three more times before finding out what my hacker had done.

In the meantime, I find it necessary to ask: if WoW were a standalone OS, would Microsoft finally look efficient?

Grammar lesson

2009-05-28T17:11:00.001-05:00

Kos of frustration.

2009-05-16T13:44:00.002-05:00

(assuming the embedded video doesn't show up on Facebook, the link to the video is here)

It should be noted that of the 30 seconds in the ad, the dog is shown for two. It should also be noted that Obama's platform was almost entirely founded on the idea of cutting government spending. Finally, and most important, Obama cut a mere $100,000,000 of spending out of the expected $1,400,000,000,000 deficit as of April 24th.

Case in point: the media should spend less time focusing on a two-second clip of a dog and more on the other $1,399,900,000,000.

Last night

2009-05-12T16:14:00.000-05:00

I know it's basically becoming a motif of my blog to write about dreams I've had, but this one was a little more interesting than others of late.

What happened? I cried. I cried unlike I had ever cried before. I cried into my mom's shirt, about everything. Everything that's been happening for so long. About the heartbreak, about the isolation, about the feelings of futility and uselessness. Absolutely anything that has weighed on my mind in the last three years, poured out in saline.

I woke up in the middle of this dream. I expected there to be moisture on my face: streams, rivers, something. But there wasn't. There was no indication I'd cried at all in the middle of the night. In fact, when I woke up, I didn't even want to cry at all. I felt... nothing.

Not nothing, I guess. I don't know what I feel. It feels like there's a coolness in the back of my head. Like when you feel like you're about to crack up laughing, only I don't feel like laughing at all.

Movies on my iTunes Rental list

2009-04-29T21:14:00.002-05:00

Boldfaced means I have not seen the movie...
12 Angry Men
2001 A Space Odyssey
All Dogs Go To Heaven
American Teen
An American Carol
Army of Darkness
Ben Hur
Blade Runner (Final Cut)
Boys Don't Cry
Capote
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Color Me Kubrick
Double Take
Dr. Strangelove
Dragonheart
Everything is Illuminated
Expelled (No Intelligence Allowed)
Fern Gully
Fools Rush In
Goodnight and Good Luck
Hard Candy
Hearts In Atlantis
Hotel Rwanda
Idiocracy
Joe Somebody
K-PAX
Little Miss Sunshine
October Sky
Pleasantville
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Saved!
Shattered Glass
Suddenly, Last Summer
The Crucible
The Fox and the Hound
The Great Gatsby
The Importance of Being Earnest
The Iron Giant
The Pelican Brief
Tommy Boy
Twilight Zone
Wakko's Wish

Random thoughts for the day

2009-04-27T18:43:00.001-05:00

10:25: Right. Let's just get through today, then wake up and get through tomorrow. Then Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, in that order.

10:28 That was funny. Why do I always make those quips?

10:33 I need more oatmeal squares. Juice would be good, too.

10:35 I think I'll write all of these down. Oh, I also need to do laundry.

10:38 Grocery shopping an acceptable way to spend the morning? Why not?

10:39 Blue playlist. Yay, melancholy.

10:43 I should clear out my Yahoo list. I know all the lyrics to "Hallelujah."

10:46 A firetruck just drove by. There must be something serious going down, there was also a cop car in the Village lot.

10:53 I sing "My Sundown" too often or the lyrics to be true anymore when I say "I'm gonna be so much more than they."

10:57 I kept him on my list. What's that saying? Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same. Funny... He was the one to tell me that. Alright... Bye, TJ.

11:02 Is there really nobody here like me? Who just wants a place to rest his head?

11:03 Right. Groceries.

11:11 I wish that he DOESN'T talk to me today.

11:14 Moderate downpour, not good for groceries.

11:33 I haven't ended a year on a high note since junior year of high school.

12:07 Hanging out with friends brings out this strange, post-sadness laughing. About just ridiculous things.

12:20 There's that sickness in my stomach. I should get moving.

12:41 Still in my friends' room. I should go now though.

12:44 Bad rain today. It smells like a lake now.

12:53 I keep using Omegle as if it's ever fulfilling. I keep doing a lot of things as if they're fulfilling...

12:56 I can't cry. Why not?
I should move again

12:59 I'm reminded of when I asked for a video game after my sister got back from New Mexico.

1:02 I really should go to a counselor.

1:06 I could write a short story.

1:13 My wallet always feels unnaturally thin.

1:16 I still need to do laundry and go shopping.

1:20 Just experienced my first city curb splash. It felt appropriate.

1:22 Maybe I should consider grad school in NYC

1:33 Got a weird look from two people in class as I sat down.

1:39 I can't remember what it was like when facebook was social.

1:40 God, I've only been here seven minutes.

1:49 What do I do about this other than just wait for it to go away?

1:49 I'd try my yellow list, but... I just don't feel ready for that yet.

1:54 I just want to lay down on a couch that isn't mine.

2:02 Damn.

2:12 A friend: "What are you doing? Are you still wandering?" Me: "Basically."

2:21 Found a couch. This will be a very unproductive time.

6:06 I ended up hanging out with friends for the past three and a half hours, but now that I'm back in my room... I feel just as down as before.

6:39 Yeah. I'm way down.

My afternoon...

2009-04-25T17:46:00.002-05:00

I walked all that blue line. It was a rather interesting journey, involving myself getting soaked halfway through and then dried again after the rain stopped. I also gave a homeless guy the one penny I had in my wallet (I'm not joking, I had a single penny and no other cash), I walked through a two-block commercial area and discovered a couple of interesting cafés there, and I stopped at an Arby's on the highway and got lunch (I didn't say I didn't have a debit card).

The one thing I can say with any definite conviction is that you really see the world differently at three miles an hour than you do at thirty.

Meiner Tag

2009-04-24T19:54:00.001-05:00

Hallo, Blog. Mein Tag beginnt mit mich früh wachen. Ich habe so-lala
diesen Tagen geschlafen, aber ich kann nicht warum sagen. Ich kann
nicht so viel auch essen. Vielleicht bin ich krank? Ich weiß nicht.

Ich habe nach Literaturklass gegangen. Wir sind das Buch ,,Fun Home"
lesen. Es ist sehr gut! Aber es ist bisschen düster, und ich
befürchte, dass meine Familie ist zu ähnlich die Familie in dem
Buch. Ich fühle mich, dass das Buch kann über mein Leben sein, und
was das sagt für meine Bindungen mit meine Familie... Es ist traurig.

Nach Literatur, hättet ich nur 30 Minuten zu essen. Ich habe einen
Burrito gegessen, weil es kocht sehr schnell und ist sehr lecker.
Dann habe ich meines Praktikum für Geologie. Das ist so langweilig!
Aber dieses war das letzte Prakrikum für der ganze Jahr. Deswegen war
ich sehr sehr glücklich.

Habe ich seit 4.30 mein Freund Adrian für Kaffee angetroffen. Wir
haben an viele Dingen gesprochen, und es hat mich gefreuen. Wir
spazieren nach Walgreens, und haben Anteile für eine Grillparty
gekauft.

Die Grillparty war die lezte Versammlung für QSA. Wir alle haben
Hotdogs gegessen, und es war eine gute Ende zu dem Tag.

Meine Tagen sind auf spät kleine sporadisch, aber wenn ich an der Gut
denke, habe ich sehr besser Zeit.

From the desk of Omegle

2009-04-24T14:48:00.006-05:00

Stranger: HELLO
You: Hi there.
Stranger: how yoy doin?
You: I'm doing good.
Stranger: IM ALSO GREAT
Your conversational partner has disconnected.

You: A little flummoxed.
Stranger: hmm, im american and im not quite sure what that means, haha
You: Confused.
Stranger: oh okay
Stranger: what are you confused about?
You: This whole website.
Stranger: haha, yeah it is quite a trip
Stranger: get used to a buncha 'hi's, and a/s/l' followed by a disconnect
You: Definitely.
You: It's like an expedited Craigslist, only you can't select the city.
Stranger: precisely
Stranger: its odd, depending on the type of day theres different types of people. sometimes its always finnish people
Stranger: other times its china
You: Hmm...
Stranger: time*
You: I talked with a few Chinese guys the first time I got on here.
Stranger: splendid
Your conversational partner has disconnected.

Stranger: ಠ_ಠ
Stranger: asl
You: 21, Male, Nebraska.
Stranger: nice
Your conversational partner has disconnected.

Stranger: what are you up to tonight?
You: Eating breakfast.
Stranger: morning there? where are you from?
You: Nebraska.
You: When I said breakfast, I meant breakfast foods.
Stranger: gotcha
Stranger: i'm eating pizza
Stranger: unfortunatrly
You: Pizza's unfortunate?
You: When did this happen?
You: I'ma smack a bitch for not telling me.
You: ∑:3
You: ^kitty
Stranger: how old are you?

Stranger: MMMMmmmmbop
You: Ahh, Hansen.
You: We were all so pure then.
Stranger: i heard they all died
Stranger: good riddance
You: That's a shame.
Your conversational partner has disconnected.

Stranger: ARGHHH ME MATEY
You: PIRATES!
You: I just wrote a blog about you guys.
Stranger: ARE YE MAN ENOUGH TO BOARD ME SHIP?!
You: Will I get to man the boom?
Stranger: DID YE? I HOPE ALL GOOD WORDS?
You: http://publicjournalno1.blogspot.com/2009/04/intriguing-note-that-laws-against.html
Stranger: I SHALL GIVE IT A LOOK SEE
Stranger: IF IT'S NOT UP TO ME STANDARD, ILL THROW YOU TO THE SHARKS
Your conversational partner has disconnected.

Stranger: Helllllooooo
You: Heya.
Stranger: From?
You: Nebraska.
Stranger: Where's that xD
You: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Nebraska&sll=40.823871,-96.699707&sspn=0.009288,0.012853&ie=UTF8&ll=41.508577,-99.84375&spn=73.349617,105.292969&z=3&iwloc=A
Your conversational partner has disconnected.

You're now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!
Stranger: I need to find Charlotte!
You: She went that way.
Stranger: thanks.. great help (y) :)
Your conversational partner has disconnected.

Stranger: balls
You: Dr. Horrible.
Your conversational partner has disconnected.

Stranger: I like brazil
You: I like cake.
Stranger: i don't
You: You're missing out.
Stranger: damn.
Your conversational partner has disconnected.

Stranger: wait, this is blatently a con, can u do 2+2?
Stranger: or is it just sending auto messages
You: I'm totally aware that two and two make four.
You: Give me something tougher.
You: Like, exponents.
You: Parentheses.
You: Or don't.
You: I don't wanna do maths right now.
Stranger: :P
Stranger: good good
Stranger: how has ur day been?
You: Pretty mellow.
You: I did a good amount of reading.
You: And walking around.
Stranger: fag
Your conversational partner has disconnected.

Stranger: asl ?
You: What is it with people calling you a fag when you say you walked around and read today?
Your conversational partner has disconnected.

You're now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!
Stranger: hello there my lovely
You: Hiya.
You: Snookums.
Stranger: you rock my socks
You: Thank you.
You: I am pretty awesome.
Stranger: your indeedy welcome
Stranger: yes, my dear, you are
Stranger: So sweetcheeks, are you married ? :O
Stranger: i know that i love you, doesnt that count?
You: Not even in a relationship.
Stranger: awww, well, you are now ;)
Stranger: ily xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
You: You weren't in love with me, you were in love with the idea of me.
Stranger: whens the ceremony?
You: Tuesday
Stranger: i love you, i never wanna lose you babyy
You: Babby?
Stranger: you sex basket
Your conversational partner has disconnected.

Oh! Piracy. Why can't we seem to keep it together?

2009-04-21T12:25:00.003-05:00

Intriguing note that laws against piracy are being drudged up this long after we thought it was just a hobby. I wonder how a fight would go down between Wali-i-Musi and some of the guys from Pirate Bay. I get the feeling the Somalian would win, but I've heard tales about Richard Stallman...

The coolest thing I've done in my life

2009-04-05T23:44:00.000-05:00

I remembered this when I was writing my most recent poem... back in elementary school, there was a guy – we'll call him... Spencer Lamb – and Spencer came into my fourth-grade class in the middle of the year.

From the time I met him, Spencer was a complete jagoff. He took every opportunity to insult me, and was always perfectly careful not to say anything within earshot of authority. He didn't even have a reason to be such a jerk. He just decided he needed to insult somebody and that it was going to be me.

Spencer tried to be a class clown. He was fond of slapstick and physical humor. Like Tom Green, only ... well, Tom Green wasn't funny, so like Tom Green. At our middle school, there were full-size lockers. Spencer thought it would be funny to squeeze himself into one. Why, I don't know. But he was in the locker, and I was there to witness his self-stuffing.

Without even thinking, I walked up to the locker, closed the door... and walked off to class. It was four years' worth of revenge coming to manifest itself in one motion of my arm.

And it was badass.

Middle school

2009-04-02T18:13:00.003-05:00

The first day of lab,
I sit in the front.
I say to myself it's so that I'm so much closer to the door,
But when the rest of the reluctants file in,
They all take the seats farther back,
And everyone's allocated to two-person tables,
But I sit alone at the front of the class.

Shrunk in my seat,
Reluctant to speak,
Hoping the teacher doesn't
Do anything to single me out.
Hey, let's get to know some personal facts .
Hey, let's start up front. "I caught a Snorlax."
OH GOD, did I just blurt out Pokémon?
And yes, my voice cracked
Llike a beaker
On the linoleum tile.

My impression shrinks further,
As eyes dutifully turn.
I give my attention to everyone cooler than me.
And that’s when I see him,
The one across the room.
Laid back and collected,
He glances at me.
His eyes spark like flint
And set my Bunsen burning.
OH GOD, don't let anyone see the flame.
Somebody will laugh
Someone always laughs.
I don’t need to be ousted
Any more than I am.

Just focus on my homework,
No need to make a spectacle
Don’t think about the pressure
He exerts within my... brain.
But I saw it, didn’t I?
The way his lips were curled,
Almost an invitation,
Why aren’t we closer?

When did these things complicate themselves?
When did the chemical reactions in my own body betray me?
I should know by now
How everyone sees me:
Most likely to succeed
If he's not stuffed in a locker and forgotten first.
The teachers say I'm interesting,
The students use another word.
red-shift and blue-shift, I guess.

The science teacher's done with her pet project
And now we've got nothing to do but
Talk until time's up,
Wait for the bell to
Usher us to our next reluctant filing.
I take quick glances at him,
Still on the other end of the room,
Between exchanges with other nerds
About Final Fantasy VII.

This is where I belong.
This posse of poindexters.
Shell myself, say I’m introverted,
Say school is my devotion
When really, I’m just afraid
To mix these chemicals,
To stir something up,
To cause a reaction.

That reminds me, the science fair is only nine months away.

Great endeavor, or STUPIDEST endeavor?

2009-03-29T11:39:00.003-05:00

I am recording, by hand, streaming music files from the Super Smash Bros. Brawl soundtrack. There are 300-some songs, but the good news is that some of them are just sound bytes. I'm undertaking this because there are a number of really enjoyable songs on the soundtrack. UNFORTUNATELY, there are also a number of brain-tossingly bad songs (I'm looking at you, entire song list for Kid Icarus). Why suffer through all of the drudge? continuity. It drives me insane when I don't have all of the sorting information I regularly use to keep songs in order. This includes the horrible track numbers. Once I've got all of the tagging information, I'll dump all of the crap songs (I'm looking at you, entire song list for Kid Icarus).

In the meantime, I've got another 137 songs to go ._.

Uncharted Safari

2009-02-24T08:01:00.001-06:00

I found it before anybody but Apple Hot News had an announcement: Safari 4. It looks like Apple was really impressed with the feature set found in Google Chrome (as well as a bit of the interface). That said, they still made the decision to include some proprietary technology, like letting you browse your history with Cover Flow.

I'm about to take this compass out for a spin. The only concern I have is whether or not it will still accept the SIMBL framework I optionally installed.

The nerdiest poem I've ever written

2009-02-04T10:23:00.001-06:00

Chemistry taught me about bonds.
In a world where a labcoat and a microscope
Were more home to me than the letterjacket and the megamall,
I learned about incomplete electron clouds
And atoms looking for E's
So that the workings of their world
Could be a little more balanced,
And the way they do that is by sharing
By bonding.
I learned about bonds in chemistry.

Chemistry taught me about compounds.
While others were making plans for making out
I was making formulae for making molecules.
Within all kinds of things exist all kinds of smaller things
That make it in the universe by
Sticking together.
Water flows like love,
Two elements joined at the hip,
Hydrogen and oxygen
Dancing through the atmosphere
To the music and majesty of metaphysics,
Becoming something better as one
Than they ever could have been separate.
I learned about compounds in chemistry.

Chemistry taught me about pure elements.
When others were declaiming sin
I was discovering simple combinations
Of atom and atom,
Homo-nucleic. We breathe it every day.
The stuff is golden,
It's solid as a diamond and smooth as graphite.
These bonds are just as strong as their compound brethren.
Sure, they occur less often in nature,
But they're just as important,
Beautiful just the way God made them.
I learned about the sterling silver pure elements in chemistry.

Chemistry taught me about covalence.
While friends were lamenting their love being one-way,
I was discovering how molecules can say,
“We’re cool with just sharing the things that we’ve got,” -
I should put a rhyme here, to thicken the plot -
“And this doesn’t have to be some power struggle,
Cause we’ve got each other. We can just snuggle.”
I’m fully aware they can’t speak like us, stupid.
I personified them to make the metaphor lucid.
And now that you’ve gotten your meter and rhyme,
I learned about covalence in chemistry.

And maybe I missed the amazing moments,
The true telling times of teen trepidation,
But if somebody gave me the magic button
And said, “Here kid,
The banker is offering you that time back.
All you’ve gotta do is give up who you became today.”
I’d think about how we sometimes get shaped
By the deals that we make,
But sometimes, some rare times,
We grow better from the deals that we break,
Sharpening ourselves to the point
We can cut through the common conceptions
Contaminating perceptions,
Letting life lose its luster
So people can barely muster
The strength just to see what’s in front of them
And never think about what’s going on beyond.
Yeah, maybe I missed those moments,
But I’ve got a lab coat and a love for lyricism.

And some day, my atoms will excite to the site
Of that one wandering mass of molecules,
And we won’t even need to wonder if it’s chemistry.
We’ll just be balanced.

Disjointed sentences

2009-01-28T08:46:00.002-06:00

I can't believe I still wake up in the morning.

I have a pain in my left side, and no idea what it is even after going to the doctor.

I'm just writing every complete thought that comes into my mind, so don't worry if I don't connect these together.

Every day I hope for something amazing to happen with the quiet understanding that nothing ever does.

I can count on one hand the most dates I've ever been on with somebody, and I didn't even like the guy.

If I had one wish, it would be that I never met that guy. I'm wholly convinced that's where my life hit its most crucial snag.

I don't read Post Secret because I envy the people who can reveal themselves artistically like that.

I envy a lot of people, mostly people in relationships.

I have been wronged by a lot of different people. I made plans to get even on a few occasions, but never did.

When I tried playing as an evil character in Fallout 3, I physically sickened myself.

I just want somebody to listen.

When I'm in my advertising classes, I hear all of this talk about brand loyalty. It makes me feel weird because I can't think of any brands I always buy over others.

I know a lot of peoples' secrets, but I could never bring myself to tell them.

I feel like an outsider. A lot.

People have made out right next to me on couches, and others have had sex in the same hotel room as me when they thought I was asleep.

I cried for no less than an hour one night while I was home this weekend, and I don't think my parents knew at all.

I pick up on things. I don't know if they're things that other people miss or not.

I see far more in my head than I do in the real world. They're always either dramatic or ridiculous scenarios. When they're dramatic, I hope they happen so that I can do something people will remember. When they're ridiculous, I hope they happen so that others do something I'll remember.

I blocked out the majority of my childhood.

I feel lonely a lot. Even when I'm surrounded by friends, I'm still alone.

When people say they thought about me, I don't believe them.

I really play video games because they let me feel important.

Twice in my life, I have felt like everything was the way it was supposed to be. The second time was when I was in Greg's arms. I can't remember the first.

I struggle with the idea that God has my best interest at heart sometimes.

I can't think of a single person whom I would say understands me.

When I die, the Konami code could be written on my gravestone for the significant role it played in my life.

Earlier in life, I wished my parents would have gotten a divorce. At this point in my life, I couldn't tell you which one I would have hoped to live with.

Nobody did anything to deserve reading this.

Nobody on the Internet believes me when I say I'm single.

There's a strong possibility I'll be lonely for the rest of my life.

Safari's first inconvenience on my life...

2009-01-19T23:25:00.001-06:00

http://brian.mastenbrook.net/display/27

Now, out of the fear of getting hijacked from who-knows-who on who-knows-what website, I've screwed with some defaults and my RSS feeds are being handled by the far-inferior Mail app. I knew my first complaint would come, but I didn't think it'd be this bad.

...Huh...

2009-01-07T11:26:00.004-06:00

Windows: Peering into the neighbor's yard and keepin' up with the Jobses.

These are the anthems, throw one of your hands up.

2009-01-04T11:38:00.002-06:00

Alrighty, so I'm borrowing this idea from my friend Justin Shilhanek, who stole this idea from his buddy Brian Hernandez. The gist of it is that if you're somebody who represents themselves with music, you give us a list of fifteen songs that have been strongly impactful for you this year. Like Justin before me, I'm opting to give a clip of the particular lyrics that resonate with me.

It's rather difficult to parse this list down to just fifteen, but here they are in the order they come on my iTunes, here it goes...

1. Chem 6A by Switchfoot
Nothing but a chemical in my head, it's nothing but laziness, 'cause I don't wanna read the book. I'll watch the movie, 'cause it's not me. I'm just like everybody else my age.

2. Topeka by Ludo
I found God in a catalytic converter in Topeka on a Monday night. Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future, so you know what keeps me hanging around. No, you can't keep a good man down.

3. When I Grow Up by Garbage
Trying hard to fit among you, floating out to wonderland. Unprotected, God, I'm pregnant. Damn the consequences.

4. Waiting for My Real Life to Begin by Colin Hay
When I woke today, suddenly nothing happened. But in my dreams, I slew the dragon. And down this beaten path, up this cobbled lane. I'm walking in my own footsteps, once again.

5. Dizzy by Jimmy Eat World
You said you'd never have regrets. Jesus! Is there someone yet who got that wish? Did you get yours, babe?

6. 23 by Jimmy Eat World
You'll sit alone forever if you wait for the right time. What are you hoping for? I'm here, I'm now, I'm ready, holding on tight. Don't give away the end, one thing that stays mine.

7. Someday We'll Know by Mandy Moore and Jon Foreman
Whatever happened to Amelia Earheart? Who holds the stars up in the sky? Is true love just once in a lifetime? Did the captain of the Titanic cry?

8. Thanks That Was Fun by the Barenaked Ladies
Deflated, and jaded. I hate it when you call, which isn't at all. And I've spoken, though broken. Here's a token of my love.

9. Dirty Second Hands by Switchfoot
Are you really as tough as you think? You blink, and you're over the brink. You bleed, but the blood runs pink, with dirty second hands, dirty second hands. You're not quite as tough as you thought, you bought the American rot, the very seed that you thought you'd shot with dirty second hands, dirty second hands. You might be right, the fight might be right inside you, the blind leading the lied-to. Tonight, maybe you bind you with dirty second hands.

10. No Sensitivity by Jimmy Eat World
The world don't spin without you, I'm amazed you're standing still. Taking my kisses back. Yeah, I want my kisses back from you.

11. Money Honey by State of Shock
As I'm staring through this fire, it's too late to make you mine, so far from where we started, so far from what we wanted. And as both of us fall down, we have lost and we have found, so far from where we started, so far from what we wanted. I've made mistakes that I can't erase, I've made mistakes.

12. Please Forgive Me by David Gray
Help me out here, all my words are falling short and there's so much I want to say. Wanna tell you just how good it feels when you look at me that way.

13. Swing Life Away by Rise Against
I'll show you mine, if you show me yours first: let's compare scars, I'll tell you whose is worse. Let's unwrite these pages and replace them with our own words. ALSO: If love is a labor, I'll slave 'til the end.

14. Please by Ludo
Please save this for me. I'll come back for you, love, I promise to. Please save this for me, for until I return. My love will burn, my heart will stay.

15. Steer by Missy Higgins
So hold this feeling like a newborn, all the freedom surging through your veins. You have opened up a new door, so bring on the wind, fire, and rain.

End-of-the-year update

2008-12-31T01:18:00.002-06:00

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...

2008-12-25T20:46:00.000-06:00

Let me show you it.

Best kiss ever

2008-12-18T16:13:00.001-06:00

The lines illustrate the colliding of their jaws.

A slow degeneration into tacky

2008-11-22T00:48:00.004-06:00

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

2008-11-04T01:54:00.004-06:00

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...

2008-11-02T22:26:00.004-06:00

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:

2008-10-27T21:17:00.002-05:00

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

2008-10-25T01:18:00.002-05:00

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

2008-10-20T13:28:00.000-05:00

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

2008-09-24T00:00:00.009-05:00

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

2008-09-11T15:27:00.001-05:00

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...

2008-08-15T18:38:00.001-05:00

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

2008-08-12T12:29:00.001-05:00

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

2008-08-10T10:46:00.001-05:00

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

2008-08-06T00:55:00.000-05:00

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

2008-08-01T11:02:00.001-05:00

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

2008-07-09T23:45:00.001-05:00

Progress report

2008-07-09T13:18:00.001-05:00

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

2008-07-08T18:29:00.003-05:00

"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

2008-07-08T18:29:00.001-05:00

"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

2008-07-08T18:27:00.002-05:00

"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(?)

2008-07-07T15:33:00.002-05:00

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

2008-06-27T21:57:00.003-05:00

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

2008-06-21T17:27:00.000-05:00

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

2008-06-15T15:48:00.001-05:00

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.

2008-06-13T16:40:00.002-05:00

A time capsule

2008-06-09T11:07:00.002-05:00

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

2008-06-08T14:26:00.001-05:00

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

2008-06-06T14:18:00.000-05:00

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

2008-06-05T08:47:00.001-05:00

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

2008-06-04T11:38:00.002-05:00

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

2008-06-03T11:01:00.001-05:00

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

2008-06-03T10:55:00.001-05:00

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

2008-06-03T09:16:00.000-05:00

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

2008-06-02T14:57:00.001-05:00

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

2008-06-02T07:58:00.009-05:00

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

2008-05-28T16:30:00.001-05:00

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

2008-05-25T16:52:00.001-05:00

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.

2008-05-22T16:17:00.006-05:00

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

2008-05-19T01:45:00.002-05:00

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

2008-05-10T08:11:00.001-05:00

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

2008-04-17T14:03:00.001-05:00

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

2008-03-31T16:46:00.001-05:00

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...

2008-03-27T13:58:00.003-05:00

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

2008-03-20T22:02:00.000-05:00

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:

2008-03-20T20:29:00.001-05:00

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

2008-03-07T08:48:00.002-06:00

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!!!

2008-03-06T13:32:00.001-06:00

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

2008-03-05T18:08:00.002-06:00

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

2008-03-03T19:12:00.002-06:00

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

2008-02-04T22:16:00.002-06:00

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.

2008-02-01T14:07:00.000-06:00

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

2008-01-28T15:40:00.001-06:00

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

2008-01-19T00:36:00.001-06:00

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

2008-01-14T23:06:00.000-06:00

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.

Tomorrow (written last night)

2008-01-14T13:40:00.001-06:00

I've been moved in for a day now, and I find myself thinking about two things more than anything else:

1) the friends I left behind at Doane, and

2) the crippling loneliness I've felt ever since September of 2006.

The first, obviously, is the standard separation anxiety that everyone faces when they're in an unfamiliar place. Still, I did write "I miss you" on well over two dozen Facebook walls tonight. I can only imagine what my friends are doing over interterm. Likely drinking (except for Benjamin, of course), playing copious amounts of Smash Brothers, and generally having an awesome time. I get the insatiable urge to buy a car thinking about them. Sure, there are guys here who play Melee, but they use items. Enough said.

Classes are starting soon, though, and I'm hoping that that'll make it easier to meet some new people and make friends with them, granted they appreciate my style of humor... If somebody only ever acts socially inept around people, does that mean that he's effectively socially inept?

As for the loneliness, I continue to reflect on the whole matter, and, well... will I ever love again?

Only God knows what tomorrow brings, but I wish he'd give me a hint.