Monday, May 26

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

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

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

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

Chanticleer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm glad my sister's found hers.

The day where I did nothing.

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

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

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

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

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

Waiting For My Real Life to Begin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2007-2008 in review

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

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

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

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

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

What am I missing?

Microeconomics Question

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

Bus ride

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nobody knows but they.

I imagine...

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

Mini-bio/main creed

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

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

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

Things that annoy me:

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

Song Number Four

This Thing Called Love

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

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

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

(chorus)

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

(chorus)

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

STEVE JOBS!!!

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

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

Propagandifts

Propagandifts

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

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

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

Exercise

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

9-12-9 Haiku

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

I'm ready to return my testicles now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mid-lecture thought

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

Two revelations

Two revelations

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

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

Today

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

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

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

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

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

Tomorrow (written last night)

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.