A Bigger Meaning

This One's for the Times When You Look at Kramer and All you See is a Giant Turkey

2010-06-22T22:38:00.000-07:00

I know, long time no blog. Sorry Charlies. Although I do appreciate those of you who stuck with me. Your prize is reading a sweet blog before everyone else. Thank you.

The motivation behind me breaking out of my cone of silense is that I'm currently having my mind blown. I'm reading this book these days, Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer (fyoor?), have you heard of it? The narrative/premise is that this author is a new father and he's out investigating the commercial meat industry searching for guidance on whether or not he should feed his son meat. So it goes through factory farms, family farms, detailing the lives and deaths of the animals we eat. And, while I'm only 4/5 of the way through it, I have a sneaking suspicion the author is going to form some conclusions about vegetarianism/omnivorism/responsible meat eating/etc.

Here comes the mind blowing part. I think we all read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair in high school, or at least parts of it? In case you're unaware, The Jungle was this book written in the 1920s about how crazy disgusting and unsafe the slaughterhouse industry was. It freaked a bunch of people out, started a movement, and gave birth to the USDA. Or FDA. Some regulatory body. So I always thought that since then, the meat industry had gotten a lot better about stuff like that, only as gross as a slaughterhouse haaaddd to be, you know. But man, some of the things I'm reading in this book are really freaking me out about eating meat. The sheer level of animal cruelty this factory farming system is based on is staggering. There's just so much, I don't even know where to start, but like, any way I can imagine these animals being abused is happening in these farms with startling regularity. Let's experience a passage:

"If your operation is running at the proper speed -- 105 chickens crated by a single worker in 3.5 minutes is the expected rate according to several catchers I interviewed - the birds will be handled roughly and, as I was also told, the workers will regularly feel the birds bones snapping in their hands. (Approximately 30 percent of all live birds arriving at the slaughterhouse have freshly broken bones as a result of their Frankenstein genetics and rough treatment.)...
"Load the crates into trucks. Ignore weather extremes and don't feed or water the birds, even if the plant is hundreds of miles away. Upon arrival at the plant, have more workers sling the bird, to hang upside down by their ankles in metal shackles, onto a moving conveyer system. More bones will be broken. Often the screaming of the birds and the flapping of their wings will be so loud that workers won't be able to hear the person next to them on the line. Often the birds will defecate in pain and terror...
"The next stop on the line for the immobile-but-conscious bird will be an automated throat slitter. Blood will slowly drain out of the bird, unless the relevant arteries are missed, which happens, according to another worker I spoke with, 'all the time.' So you'll need a few more workers to function as backup slaughterers... Unless they too miss the birds, which I was also told happens 'all the time.'"

While it's not always as graphic as these pages, these are the types of things the book talks about all the time. All the different kinds of farms, the myths of "free range", social excuses for eating meat, environmental inefficiency, all that stuff. It's freaking me out though man, I'm a couple pages away from quitting the stuff altogether. (meat.) I'll go finish the book and update you later.

All the events of your Life have Led up to this Moment

2010-04-13T16:08:00.000-07:00

It's just difficult you know? Keeping up with all of this blogging stuff. The last couple weeks have been such a rude awakening, I came out of spring break all chill and cool and then I was slapped hard in the face by books and academia. In the last two weeks I've had two Ultimate tournaments, completely consuming my weekend, skipped way too many classes and such, and for some reason I'm finding it way too impossible to wake up at 9am. Whatever though, I'm not worried about it. I'll still get As in every class but Symbolic Logic (lame), and that will be the end of it.

I'm way into fatalism these days. Wild stuff. In case you both don't know what that is and don't know how to use wikipedia, fatalism is the idea that all of our lives are governed by fate and things are predestined to unfold exactly as they do. Stuff like that. Like the idea that the events of your life couldn't have gone any differently. Wild right? The great thing about fatalism is that it's such a zen like approach to life, you can employ it exactly when you want to and you don't have to if it's not convenient. I adopted fate hard core a while ago when I was locked out of my car 3 times in two weeks, I took it as a hardcore sign that it was time for me to learn to open my car door with a hanger. And I did. And I haven't had a problem since. One day, sometime in the future, there's going to be a situation when I need to break into a car and I will be prepared because of moments like these.

I guess it sounds kind of out there for a universal theory, but don't you guys just feel sometimes like things were meant to happen a certain way? Or like that the world is so complex and so many people's lives are going on simultaneously that there's only one way we could all coexist together like we do? It's just history and stuff man, like could you really imagine a United States that didn't arise from the leadership of George Washington and does it really seem possible for Civil Rights to make the progress it has without the generations of events leading up to it? Sometimes it just seems like you do everything for a reason, so then everything must happen for a reason, and reasons are caused by other reasons, and it just goes on and on. Is this making sense?

I think fate makes the most sense with relationships, it's just so applicable. There has to be so much going right for a relationship to be even moderately successful. The two (+...?) people have to be at the exact right point in their lives, they both have to be ready to meet each other. Here's an example, do you guys ever meet someone once, incidentally, uneventfully, and then like months or years later you run into that person again and you have a much more meaningful friendship? Is it so out there to think that your friendship was just kind of biding its time until you were both in the right places to receive each other? I guess I'm just saying that it just feels sometimes like things were meant to happen a certain way, or like things happen for a reason.

As Jeff Goldbloom would say: Life will find a way.

A Day Late/A Buck Short

2010-03-26T04:54:00.000-07:00

Greatest apologies for the absence of a Thursday post, hopefully this Friday here will serve to alleviate your misgivings.

I don't know what it is about Troutdale man, but all I can think of when I'm here is the Pursuit of Love. Troutdale is a place where all of my cares melt away and are replaced with a desire to find my counterpart. I never worry about school, my career, the future, friends, or money in Troutdale, instead I spend the majority of my time watching movies and thinking about girls. That's probably why I did so poorly in high school. On second thought maybe that's the real effect here, coming to Troutdale brings me back to the days of my youth, also during which all I did was think about girls. It's not even just girls though man, that's the weirdest part. It's none of the usual who's hot/who's not bullshit that already takes up a bunch of brain space. The girl thought that goes on in Troutdale is heavy, long term relationship day dreaming. Troutdale, for example, is the only location where I think of myself as a married person. Troutdale is the source of every notion of myself as I might be as a solid adult, with a wife and kids and stuff. I never think about that in Salem. Willamette's not the place for that.

I think that's due in large part to this schema I have of college as being this alternate reality in some way. Right? In a lot of ways college is just a little diversion on my way to the rest of my life. After I do the whole college thing, I'll get back on the path. That's definitely the way I think of it sometimes. College is, after all, a fantasy land. The college life we're all living now is at best a simulated adulthood, different from the real thing in all but the most superficial layers. They try and trick you right? Everyone says: alright, now that you're in college you're an adult. That's not true. I'm not an adult. I don't feel like one anyway. I know very few people who would feel comfortable describing themselves as adults in college. Just look at the way we live. The way we live in college is hardly comparable to the life of an adult. I woke up yesterday, at the time of my choosing, and I walked into my house, walked around, and I was profoundly struck with the feeling that I have nothing to do. There was literally nothing I should have been doing today. No pressing responsibilities to speak of, no calls to return, no plans to fulfill, no tasks on the to do list. Good luck finding an adult like that.

I guess that's why I have college stuck in my head as a diversion from life. College isn't life, it's just all the good parts in one place. None of the bad. Don't get me wrong, I love it. Who doesn't you know? If you don't like college you're either taking it too seriously, unbalanced, or you need to transfer to a nice state school. The fact remains though that life is out there, not in here.

None of this has to do with my pursuit of love. Probably because it's still an aimless pursuit. I've already pictured my life with everyone I would dare try to picture my life with, and nothing's sticking. If there's nothing here, I guess college is the closest thing to life I have. It's probably the closest thing we all have.

On a sidenote, you should all go see Fargo. That movie is sheer beauty, perfect storytelling.

Breaking News: One Mind Disagrees With an Entire Industry

2010-03-22T17:22:00.000-07:00

So I guess it finally happened yesterday, Obama passed his health care plan, unfortunately, since I'm a 21 year old white male, I have no need of health insurance, so this doesn't really effect me at all. I'll be sure to thank Obama when I'm 40 and have two heart attacks under my belt. I do like to think of myself as a pretty politically engaged person though. I get interested in things political, and I watch both Meet the Press and This Week every week. So I guess maybe I'm less of a patron of things political and more of a patron of the political news media. In this country though, it's hard to distinguish the two. In any case, I find myself getting sicker and sicker of politics with each of these so called 'political' programs. Or rather, I suppose I find myself getting sicker and sicker with the political news media. I'm prepared, right here, on this blog, to blame the political news media, for everything that's wrong in this country.

Television networks like CNN, NBC and ABC, are easily the worst sources of political news. Their half hearted attempts at 'informing the public' couldn't be less genuine. The way the business model of news media should work is a strategy of developing trust with the public by means of giving them the best possible news coverage and analysis, they should be establishing themselves as a source of information and education, that's how you gain viewers. Instead, all of these news corporations try simultaneously to alienate one portion of the population while appealing to another based solely on personality cults and the creation of artificial conflict. The current strategy of the televised news media is that of turning our political nation into one giant sporting event, with the media commentating on the whole contest between two opponents. The last thing American politics should be is the Super Bowl. The Republicans aren't the Colts and the Democrats aren't the Saints, and CNN definitely shouldn't be John Madden. The problem is that that's a tested successful business model. But there is a better way! There's a way to present the news, make a profit, and keep your business ethics intact!

As hard as it is to believe CNN, I'd rather watch a program that cares more about informing me than displaying an 'epic juxtaposition'. The American people care about themselves equally if not more than they care about their political team. The way it is now, news media believes in informing the public just enough for them to barely follow their commentary. The fact that we live in a news culture that spends more time talking about how the passage of this health care bill will affect the elections this November than telling me what the actual bill contains is a pathetic travesty. I'm not an ignoramus, I watch the news, and I have absolutely no answers on how much this bill will actually cost, NO ONE can agree on this point. I have no answers on whether or not it's even a big deal that this bill costs a lot. When the news has people on talking, they care more about the style of the debate they provoke than the people understanding the substance of the arguments. Thank you for appealing to my emotions news media, but I'd rather hear passionate AND evidenced based, rational arguments, rather than empty rhetoric. I shouldn't have to work this hard to figure out what the truth is. That's your job.

In Like a Lion, Out Like A Yam

2010-03-18T18:53:00.000-07:00

It's finally springtime in Oregon, hurray. The months of cold in my drafty garage have finally paid off, and now that winter has shied away from the greener pastures, my adapted abode is again livable.

Of course, thoughts of springtime always eventually lead into thoughts of summertime. The summer has been a fixture in my dream scape for as far back as I can remember, certainly as long as I was in school and new what the seasons were. In fact, due to kids everywhere, I'd wager that summer is probably the most dreamt about season. And it's a well earned honor, summer has all the trappings of childhood fantasy; great weather, no school, endless days, sleepless nights, what's not to love? Even if you don't have the luxury of spending all of your summer days in idleness and bohemian freedom, the summer is still a goal season because in many ways it's thought of as the end of the developmental year. For many students especially, summer can be looked upon as the season to take stock of your life, concentrate on things you really care about and get your house in order. Kind of like a whole season of New Years Resolutions.

For me at least, this summer will certainly be one of those developmental workshops. As far as I can currently tell, my summer looks like it will consist of living and working in Salem, alongside a number of other fellow Willamette students who find the idea of returning to live at home a bit too much to bear. The prospect of living in Salem this summer certainly is rife with pros and cons. Pros of course being that I'll be making bank, not paying rent and living on my own, almost like a real adult. Cons being the almost certain possibility of a lame paint crew job, not spending every available moment with great friends, and having to prepare my own food. Hazards of a cereal overdose aside though, this summer certainly promises to be one of introspection and rebirth. There will be plenty of time to do any of the many things I want to do. A big one of which is getting smarter. Of course this is always a goal for any idealistic college student, and the achilles heel of goals like these is a lack of quantitative accountability. I mean, how do you know if you're actually getting smarter? In an attempt to solve these problems, I'm going to set an arbitrary marker. That way, even if I don't get any smarter, I still will have achieved A goal. 15 books. I'm going to read 15 books this summer. That's like 5 a month so I'm definitely going to have my work cut out for me, as they say in the butchery business.

This is where you all come in. In order to make sure I make the most of these 15 books, I need to choose the right ones. Actually, THIS is where you all come in. Which ones should I read? I don't want to waste my time on lame comic books here, but I also don't want to destroy my summer with lame graduate school textbooks. Between these two extremes of lame, there must be a sweet spot of great literature I can broaden my mind with. Consider me open to your recommendations.

It's Morning in the Blogosphere

2010-03-16T03:35:00.000-07:00

In an effort to commit to productivity, like some kind of actual writer, my blogs will now come at least twice weekly, on Monday and Thursday. Any posts in addition to the ones on those days should be treated as "Special Editions".

17 days until the end of lent, which means that nominally, my Facebook fast will come to a close. I don't think I'll actually adhere to that though, I'll probably just keep the fast rolling. You know, for fasting for 23 days, I still feel pretty full. The things a life without Facebook is missing are pretty few and definitely ancillary. The biggest one is not knowing if cute girls have boyfriends or if cute girls still have boyfriends. That seriously is one of the biggies I'm missing. That's a situation easily reparable by an increase in my involvement in the gossip train. Done. Also, pictures. Having access to my Facebook photos was definitely something I enjoyed, memories man. You can't just let the past pass like that, with no image to capture the moment. Looking at pictures that mean something to you, that's a pretty special feeling. Reminiscence. Sometimes the most enjoyable of human pass times. Past times. Pastimes. Whatevs.

On the plus side, a life without Facebook is accomplishing the things wanted it to. When I was really into Facebook, I felt like nothing I ever did on it mattered. I just got so sick of the artificial community and shoddy substitute for socialization it created. Pressing 'like' on your status doesn't mean you're popular or socially well adjusted. It just means that someone read your status and agreed with it, but didn't find it/you interesting enough to actually make a substantive comment. The turning of this 'Like' button into some kind of actual expression of emotion is a joke. It's the real life equivalent of someone smirking at something you say in a conversation and then looking away. The fact that I started caring about how many people 'Liked' my status, and the conclusions I started drawing from that were just ridiculous. It went both ways too. I started using my 'Likes' as some kind of horrible social currency, thinking that I was paying someone a compliment if I granted them the knowledge that their comment compelled me to press a button.

The other condemning feature of Facebook, for me, is the Live Feed. This might just be isolated to me, but at the peak of my Facebook usage, I started treating that live feed like a social newspaper, and I'm sure that's how they want you to think of it. I got to the point where whenever I woke up in the morning, one of the first things I wanted to do was get on Facebook and see all the "news stories" that had arisen during the night. In theory this idea of a social newspaper sounds interesting, but the things on this newspaper were by no means news. The results of someone's stupid quiz, or the fact that Geoff Barry got the ugly duckling in Farmville. These aren't things I cared about, but I had to look through them all, so many times, to feel like I had gotten through this "news".

I don't have time to go into all of the reasons I don't like Facebook, but one of the most fundamental ones is that I think it promotes the wrong kind of socialization. The vast majority of Facebook socialization is watered down and half hearted. Writing two sentences on someone's wall is no where near as sociable as saying those two sentences in person. Or even on the phone. When you compare those two events, two sentences on the wall and two sentences in person, they're miles apart in terms of the actual interaction that is happening. Talking to someone in person is so much better, it's such a healthier, more genuine social experience than writing on someone's wall and communicating through such a distorted medium. Now, you may be one of my friends I don't see everyday, and you may be thinking, man, now that Andrew doesn't have a Facebook the amount I can keep in touch with him is really going to go down. Believe me, I appreciate your quandry, but I have 10 digits that can solve it forever. You get 3 guesses. Ah, I forgot, picking up the phone and actually placing a call to me is more inconvenience than you'd like to endure. Let the lament commence.

Other things that are inherently stupid in Facebook include:

Facebook friends that you've never met or never talked to

Getting to know someone through their profile

Conversations that you'd much rather have on Facebook chat than in real life

Measuring your self validation as a function of how many notifications you have each day

on and on and on...

This blog's running long. Plenty of people like a nice long run after they wake up.

Approaching Crymax

2010-01-07T03:31:00.000-08:00

I mentioned the hater on my blog to Taylor tonight and I realized that no one else besides Chris really knew about him either. Take a look at the comments on my fantastic post, "Her Feet Are Infested With Tar Balls" from July 23, 2008. This was a great post right in the middle of my first great blogging age.

I'm not really interested in getting into a big fight with this guy personally, but I will say that I think it's a little hypocritical to be calling me out for acting superior and sophisticated. Anyone who's calling someone out is implicitly saying that they themselves are superior to that person.

I know that it's natural for people to feel superior to their surroundings and people around them, but I also think that it's the right idea to have. I think it's almost a given. It's like a logical necessity for me to think that my thoughts are better than yours. If I was of the opinion that your thoughts were better than mine, I would just agree with yours. But I don't, so I obviously think mine are better. The trick is not being a jerk about it. And not thinking you're infallible I suppose.

I've been doing way too much blogging this winter break. I don't know man, I quit doing this stuff like once a month. I keep coming back to this question of why I do it. One of the frequent answers I come to is that I enjoy entertaining the idea that all of my friends will read my blog and be so impressed with how deep I can be and how great a writer I am and how cool a person I am. So pretty often I get sick of being that person and I retreat to a more private journal. The problem is that about once a month, I remember that I do want people to think I'm cool/deep/a good writer, so I cave into myself and try and put it on display. Unfortunately for my ego, I think I've pretty much rid myself of the delusion of being a good writer. That's not really surprising though because I don't think I'm good at anything. Seriously, it's weird.

I still think I'm about as cool and deep as anyone would ever want me to be though, so I hope I've convinced you.

The Final Countdown

2009-12-12T17:13:00.000-08:00

So for all of you who have been lamenting my lack of blogs that don't know already, the last month had been dedicated to a revolutionary blogging project called Salad Days. Salad Days was meant to be a massively collaborative effort among bloggers to create a space that would lend itself to unbridled, contributive dialogue. Essentially it was a forum where bloggers of all kinds could inject their ideas into an environment of conversation. Unfortunately this dream never really took off. I don't know what the problem was, it must have something to do with not creating the environment well enough. The relevant point is though, blogging is back in full force.

I've said this before, but finals week is definitely my favorite part of college. The whole finals week vibe can either be amazing or life threatening, it's all about time management. The key to mastering finals week is planning everything out weeks in advance. Spacing out big projects and setting daily goals. This creates a win win win situation by letting you get all your stuff done and never feeling like you should be doing more work. The reason finals week is so awesome is that as long as everything is planned out, it's all totally predictable, so you never really have to worry about doing anything more than you already know you have to. The result is this overwhelming sense of control, the feeling that you have everything handled, and the week belongs to you. Will to Power.

It's times like these that I really do love living off campus. I'm really just sitting my living room right now with Timm, listening to Bob Dylan and letting the day slip away. Solid stuff. There is some great drama though, it's not all fun and games. Probably the biggest issue right now in our house is the lack of anyone cleaning the kitchen. Our kitchen right now is a total mess, there are dirty dishes everywhere, there's food in pots on the stove, no one's swept/mopped the floor in forever, it's a definite sty. We've had this problem all semester and about two months ago, there was this little movement to divide everything up with a chore list. There was a note posted above the kitchen sink asking for people to sign if they thought it was a good idea. That note went up two months ago, Ian just signed it today, that's the only signature. I think that maybe some chores of the kitchen should be divided like that, but definitely not dishes. I don't exactly do a lot of cooking here, and the cooking I do doesn't ever take more than 4 dishes, so I feel like if dishes were divided up evenly, I would get majorly screwed, doing way more dishes than I ever actually use. We do have a dishes problem, but it's a problem that can be solved by greater accountability, bugging people who leave their dishes in the sink. That's my solution anyway, communal regulation of the self. I'm sure this problem will never be solved anyway.

Viva

2009-11-04T01:05:00.000-08:00

Modern Latin America is really ramping up these days. It's easily my favorite/second favorite class. Probably favorite actually because there are more cute girls in it. Anyway, we talked a bit today about the Cuban Revolution and I don't think I really appreciate the way it was presented. For those of you who don't know, the Cuban Revolution is the one in the late 1950s that facilitated the rise of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. There's this huge college movement these days that supports the revolution because of all of the good it did for the nation. And it did do a lot of good for the nation in some ways. Literacy went up a bunch, health care greatly improved, women gained more rights, land was redistributed more evenly and all the things like that. But the cost was a communist state.

Now, ideologically, I don't have a problem with communism. It's an alternative form of economy/government, and it's important to remember that the United States is more socialized than we all like to admit. Especially in regards to this health care movement. What I do have a problem with is the idea of a nation suppressing the rights of the individual. The way all the communist states I can think of have been run is with massive censorship, restricted travel and regulated employment. This translates to a government that won't allow me to speak out against it, won't allow me to leave the country, and will proceed to tell me where I need to perform my profession. On the point of regulated employment, the reason health care was improved so much is because the government would literally reallocate physicians and medical personnel. As a Doctor, I might have an office in Havana, right in the city, but then the revolutionary government could march in and tell me that I have to take my practice into the rural farmlands. Regardless of whether or not I wanted to move out there.

As I said, I don't have a problem with the idea. In part because I don't think it works, I suppose. But I really don't have a problem with the idea of nationalized health care. I agree that there are certain things that a person can expect their nation to provide. Education is one of them, it has been in this country for something like 150 years. Health care is another one. I like the idea of a nation that looks after the health of its citizens. But there are also parts of my life I don't think the government has the right to control. What I say and what my opinions are is one of those. Where I go, is really the most fundamental one I think. Everyone always gets up in arms about censorship, but I'd say that restricting international travel is much more egregious. If I don't like the way the country is operated, I should definitely have the right to leave it. Forcing me to stay is a state policy of kidnapping. In my opinion. The jobs issue is kind of on the fence. Part of me says just to leave it up to me to get a job, that's something I can handle. But I'm sure that's just a factor of me living in the US. I don't find it too hard to envision a person getting mad at the government because there aren't enough jobs, I mean, who else are they going to get mad at?

I don't want you all thinking that I'm a patriotic nutball who hates governments that aren't American. That's not true at all. I easily think that a benevolent monarch is the best form of government there is. I wouldn't even really mind life under a dictatorship. The United States isn't actually a capitalist State, we live in a mixed economy. There's much more federal regulation of the economy than there would be under a true capitalist regime. Do I really care if my electricity is nationalized? No, I wouldn't care, as long as they don't screw it up. Living in a country that takes care of those things wouldn't be that big of a deal.

I mean, if I can leave, that's fine. I might be able to go and see what it's like in different type of nation and see which one I like best. If I lived in revolutionary Cuba and was able to leave, maybe I would live in the US for a year and decide that it wasn't actually as good as I thought it was and I enjoyed life in Cuba more. It just seems like, if you've got a country with a bunch of people who are yearning to leave, you're doing something wrong.

Black Mirror

2009-11-03T01:19:00.000-08:00

Ok, so, I've got Veckatimest rolling. I started off with Two Weeks so that was good. It's been pretty downhill from there. Currently I'm on Hold Still. It's true that this doesn't really say much though. Some of the best albums are completely horrible the first time you hear them. Wincing the Night Away was that way for me. As were all three Yeah Yeah Yeahs albums. So I guess we'll see how it comes along.

It's Winter in Salem, in case you couldn't guess. I just got back from night practice at about 12:45 at night. Yeah, it's pretty late. But even worse, it's freaking cold these days. I live like a mile away from campus, so it's probably the chilliest bike ride I'll ever make all the time. It's ridiculous. I'm really starting to wonder why I ever moved off campus. Seriously, a part of me really misses living on campus. It's pretty much where the action is. Campus is pretty much the heart of college. Living in a big hall with all of your friends, staying up late in the dorms. You people don't know how lucky you are to be able to wake up 10 minutes before class and get there early. Parties are a breeze. Going across campus to party and then come back when you're done, crash out on your twin sized bed and wake up at 1 the next day and go to brunch. Those were the days man. Partying when you live off campus is a major hassle. The only parties you'll ever go to are also off campus so you're biking all around the city at all hours of the night. We live pretty far away from campus too, so if we were to go to a party that's equally far away from campus in the other direction you can completely forget about leaving with anyone.

Don't get me wrong though, there are certainly some things I really like about having a real house. First of all, it's extraordinarily cheaper. If you care about money that's pretty cool. Living by myself, yet in a house with a bunch of friends is pretty much perfect. There are plenty of easily accessible common areas, so there's never that weirdness about going into someone's room. Quick side note on going into people's rooms: Does it ever make you guys uncomfortable to go into someone's room? Like, just to have that knowledge of a kind of power shift when you're in someone's room, you can never really relax you know, it's like you're always a guest. I don't know, something like that. Anyway, common rooms, like the kitchen and living room, great equalizers. If you drink, living off campus is really a better way to drink than living on campus. You don't ever really have to worry about getting busted, you don't have to hide the beer in your room, all of that stuff.

What would really be great would be living in this house, just one block away from campus. There's a severe lack of solid housing really close to campus. I'm not really sure why that is, I'm sure it's a pretty complicated reason. There are always campus apartments, but there's just something about your own house that feels really good. Makes you feel adult and stuff. Who knows anymore.

My Love is a Life Taker.

2009-11-02T00:59:00.000-08:00

Taylor's getting on my about blogging more. Can't disappoint the fans. Too late.

I guess the reason I don't blog very much is that all the stuff I'm into right now is stuff that I know no one wants to read about. It's not like there's nothing going on in my life, or that there isn't really anything important happening to me, it's just all a bunch of lame stuff that I know you people don't care about. In case you were actually wondering, the amount of thinking about Ultimate I do every day could fill 5 blogs. Continuously. I'll take you on a little tour of how me writing about Ultimate would go.

We have our first tournament of the year this weekend. It's going to be pretty scary. We perenially do pretty poorly at tournaments, we've never really been that good of a team. On the other hand, we have a lot of talent this year, and we look better than we have in a long time. I guess we'll find out how it goes this weekend. We have a lot of veterans, but we also have a lot of new people on the team too. It looks like we'll be taking about 20 guys to this tournament, kind of a lot of people. The problem is that they all want playing time, and for about 6 of them this will be their first tournament, so one of the things we're struggling with is how we're going to manage how people get to play and stuff like that. When I say we, I basically mean me and 2 other guys, Timm and Ian. I could pretty confidently say that the three of us are the leaders of the team this year. I don't know how many of you knew that about me, but I'm a big part of the team leadership this year. Anyway, the conflict arises not merely out of the fact that we have a bunch of guys that want to play, that wouldn't be a problem in itself, just divide playing time evenly, or let it be a free for all. The problem comes in when they're not all very good and we kind of want to play well in our games. How do you make a competitive line while giving your new players some time as well? Definitely the question of the weekend. Of course this whole question comes about because we're all insecure about any of our lines' ability to actually score on these teams. In the end though, even if we lose all our games this weekend, it will be a good learning experience for the team. The goal I suppose is just to let it not be too frustrating for people who think we could do better.

Your tour's over, proceed to the exits located on all sides.

I don't know man, if it's not Ultimate it's drinking and stuff, and if it's not that it's pretty much the same old shit about me not feeling like I'm being productive enough. Sometimes I fee like my blog is just one big fucking Mad Lib. Ok, so today I really tried to _________, but I couldn't because of ______ maybe next time I'll try _________. This paragraph follows the formula exactly.

I guess you really have to figure out what you're blogging for. Chris asks me this all the time, I think in an effort to get me to realize it myself. And the answer is I don't know. The list is kind of a long one. I like writing, I want to be a good writer, I like feeling like people are reading things I write and laughing/thinking/admiring. It comes down to something pretty simple I guess, whether you're blogging for yourself or blogging for your readers. It's a tough question to answer. If you say you're blogging for your readers you sound like some pompous, egotistical idiot who's elevating himself to some kind of 'blog to serve' bullshit. But then if you say you're just blogging for yourself, I mean, then why aren't you just keeping a private journal right? Who knows anymore.

Words and Dreams and A Million Screams

2009-10-25T01:48:00.000-07:00

Mid Semester is here. Hooray. The stress and urgency of midterms is through and we can all finally start thinking rationally about the semester again. Also, in case any of you had forgotten, it's my B day on Thursday. Rock on. If you ever want to know what being in a bar is like, feel free to ask me on Thursday. That is, if I can remember! Am I right?! No. I'm wrong. I can think of at least 5 things I would rather be doing than blacking out on a Wednesday night.

One of them is Grizzly Bear. I don't know what to think about this new band on the scene. Part of me says that their success is largely a derivative of fellow animal band name Fleet Foxes, plus the sense that Grizzly Bears have some kind of positive iconic value. On the other hand, I do like bears. The Grizzlier the better. I guarantee you that in Alaska, there's a mixed drink called the Grizzly Bear. Hopefully you can order it extra Grizzly. I'm pretty sure they just add more Grizzle. Maybe I'll try out their new album if I get enough adamant comments about it on this post.

On another musically related note (pun), I've got some severe questions about vinyl. I don't get the appeal. I mean, I understand that vinyl seems cooler. And I understand that you seem much cooler if you have things on vinyl. I think that's mostly because you get to say the word vinyl so much more. But I don't understand what the true advantage is. The rumor is that, like, records sound better, better fidelity or whatever. But it's definitely a fact that every record I've ever heard played in person has a much lower sound quality. Is it just me? Mm, maybe it's because the only vinyl albums I ever hear are old albums so the quality sucks anyway? I really don't know. But I feel like digital is probably the best quality a person can get. That's why they digitally remaster things. Whatever that means.

Red Wine With Every Meal. And Absinthe After Dinner

2009-10-16T03:50:00.000-07:00

There are 18 tabs open in my Google Chrome right now. This is one of them, the other 17 are news articles. The road to intelligence is paved with awareness.

Man, ever since I was talking to Chris, I feel like I need to clarify a few things from my last post. I'll admit that there were tones of arrogance, naiveté, and immaturity. There were a lot of tones in that last post. Very tonal. But behind all of the ridiculous, narrow minded, stubborn rhetoric lay a specific point. I was in my Intellectual History class today, and we were talking about Marx and Engels' views of Communism, and we talked about what it would look like, and we analyzed the texts and we tried to flesh out what the authors were thinking. Through the course of our class discussion we painted this picture of how a Communist society would operate according to the literature. What we didn't do in that class period is talk about whether or not they were good ideas. We got the ideas going, we were true to the texts, but we didn't talk about the consequences and we didn't talk about the flaws. And we shouldn't have. The class is not called "A Critique of 19th Century European Intellectual Thought", it's called "European Intellectual History of the 19th Century". The emphasis of the course is focused upon understanding these thinkers in their own time, in the context of their era. Not in the context of our era.

Basically what it comes down to is that I don't want to spend the rest of my life trying to examine history apart from my own biases. I don't want to have to take my thoughts out of the equation of historical study. The main tenet of historiography these days is that you're trying see the past as it was. That's the big idea behind historical thought: the past as it was. I'm not interested in that stuff. I'm not interested in devoting my career to trying to present one portion of history as purely as I can. Because I don't care about the past. It's interesting, but it's only interesting because I live in the present, and that's what I care more about. Not the past as a function of the past, but the present as a function of the past.

As soon as you start analyzing the past and applying it's ideas to the present, you're doing philosophy. In my opinion at least. I think I know some historians who would disagree with me, but as far as I'm concerned, as soon as you're forming an opinion on the present, you're doing philosophy. And that's what I'm interested in. Again. I don't want to be in a position that forces me to quell my opinions in the interest of "accuracy", I'd rather be in one that celebrates them.

I can't wait for Joel's next unintelligible comment.

Strike That, Reverse It.

2009-10-14T17:54:00.000-07:00

History's out, Philosophy's in. All of that stuff I said about Philosophy not being relevant enough to people's life, first of all, is false, second of all doesn't matter. I'm ashamed of my readers for not pointing this out.

It depends on the type of Philosophy you do, but surely it effects everyone all the time. Anytime anyone makes any kind of judgment based on a philosophical underpinning they're employing philosophy even if they don't know it. Everyone operates under their own philosophy. And becoming a philosopher myself will allow me to tell them all that they're wrong! Anyone who knows me knows that I love telling people that they're wrong. And if you don't think that, you're incorrect. I heard someone say that there are no right answers in philosophy. This couldn't be more untrue. The great thing about philosophy is that you're always right and you're constantly trying to convince everyone else that you're the one with the right answer. Which isn't to say that you can't change your mind. But changing your mind's not a problem because you can change your mind, and still be right. You're always right. If you changed your mind you can say that yeah, you used to be wrong, but now you're right, while before, of course you were saying you were right.

The problem with history is all you're doing is analyzing. The only cool part about history is trying to figure out why things happened. And that is really cool, but it's probably impossible to figure out in a lot of cases. In philosophy, all you do, is read texts and either agree with them, and receive support for your views, or try and figure out why they're wrong. It's basically a life of judgement. What could be better? Thesis: A big paper describing why so and so was wrong. Dissertation: A bigger paper describing the flaws in so and so. All subsequent publishings: Pages upon pages on why everything you think is correct. Life, here I come.

Eurail Gunna Die

2009-10-01T18:20:00.000-07:00

Ah! A moment of weakness! Why go to a mediocre graduate school, work super hard to get my degree, write my dissertation and compete in a struggling job market, when I could just move to Europe and write for the rest of my life?! Sounds perfect no? I could go abroad, live somewhere in Europe for a while, bum around, move somewhere else for a while. Live in Rome, London, Paris, Amsterdam, embrace my European roots, all while... writing? I don't really care, I could write a travel diary. I could get a job writing freelance articles for some magazine. Maybe a green living magazine? I could become some kind of correspondent on European environmentalism. Maybe I'll just do both. Graduate with a degree in History, and learn to write. Peace Corps it up for two years, spending my time in some exotic country finding out what I want to be, who I want to become, changing my plan entirely. Then I'll get back, maybe chill out at home for a month or so, then fly off to Europe to begin my adult life. Get the best job I can doing something I love; right now it's writing, but that could change into some kind of politics, advocacy job type thing.

I just spent about 45 minutes looking online at how to be a freelance writer abroad. The outlooks seemed pretty bleak. So I guess I'll just have to find another way to bum around Europe. Enter Fulbright.

Fulbright will still let me go to Europe, with the added bonus of fostering my love of History. The only real downside is that I'd have to actually win it, and that I'd have to find some kind of project that I'd be looking to do. Also, it would probably supplant my Peace Corps plans. After residing in Europe for a year, I probably won't want/need to Peace Corps it up. But that would actually be fine. Kind of. Getting a Fulbright would probably help me get into Grad school even more than joining the Peace Corps would because I'd have the extra advantage of winning this scholarship, and demonstrating my commitment to History and demonstrating that I'm driven towards an academic purpose. On the other hand, no Peace Corps would probably not be as cool in terms of telling my life story. The Peace Corps sounds way more exotic and adventurous than spending a year studying in France. Well, maybe it doesn't.

Even after it all though, being a professor at some sweet university would still be my most favorable long term option. I still love the idea of doing all the research and becoming a fucking expert on one topic. If I want to/ am able to, I can even write a sweet book about it and gain national renown. Then, once I actually get my degree, I can just teach cool college kids forever. How could that not be what everyone wants?

I think this all just points to my lack of a good Europe experience. Ever since I started understanding why I didn't enjoy my first one, I've always wanted to go back. I guess I was just afraid that I wouldn't be able to get the cliche European backpacking wanderlust that every white college student needs to get back to his roots.

Alright, I've got it. Peace Corps still, right after graduation. Somehow I'm able to get a spot in Europe. Most likely in Eastern Europe, I figure that's where they need the most global aid (as if anyone really needs me to help them get sucked in by Western Globalization). While I Peace Corps, assuming I don't have enough free time to travel around, I do some freelance writing. I save the meager earnings I get from freelance writing and just take 3-6 months after my Peace Corps mission expires and just Europe for awhile directly afterwards. Sounds perfect. If the Peace Corps term is really two years, there would be a bunch of dead time before I could go to grad school anyway... right? I kind of hope that math is wrong actually. So that means I won't go to grad school for three years? Hmm, even longer than anticipated... Whatever man, I'll just start grad school when I'm 25. Wow. Anyways, that's the idea.

Hop on Cap

2009-10-01T00:02:00.000-07:00

I've pretty much been on a week long learning spree. I'm pretty much spending all of my time these days either reading books for class or reading all of these online news sources on environmental news. Somehow I've been plunged headfirst into this environmental movement. I'm all about being Green these days, I love it. I'm bicycling over to school everyday, it's pretty much ridiculous. Life without a car is so glorious. I'm biking over to Safeway all the time, buying food, trying to buy local, which is basically impossible, but I was super stoked when I saw that Carmen's Tortilla Chips were packaged in Eugene. Telling the checkout person that I don't need a bag. That's the environmental life man. Not really. I mean, I still use electricity and stuff.

Anyway, back to the Climate. I'm all into this clean energy action right now. In case you don't know, there's a huge new bill in the Senate these days putting a cap on carbon emissions. Isn't that wild? Finally, our country is going to put a stop to our carbon emissions! Less smoke in the air! Cap and Trade man, that's the bill of the future. The idea is that the first step is that by 2012, carbon emissions have to be cut by 20% (below 2005 levels). Not too shabby. Then you have the Trade. There are certain companies who are going to need to be able to emit more carbon than some others. Reasonable. So under this bill, a market will be set up for businesses to buy and sell carbon 'permits' between each other. Basically, the companies who cut their carbon emissions the most will be monetarily rewarded by selling their carbon permits, while companies who don't have to pay for more permits. But there are also only a certain number of permits available, so it's not as though any company could just keep buying and buying permits.

Also included in this bill are a bunch of provisions for shifting away from coal as our main energy supplier, and towards cleaner natural gas and sustainable sources like nuclear, solar and wind.

I'm sure none of you even care, but it's pretty awesome.

Two Becomes One, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Game

2009-09-17T16:01:00.000-07:00

School's going well, Astronomy's boring, History is hard, all that nonsense. Things are pretty much college as usual here for now. The thing I'd really like to talk about is the fact that I'm on the verge of making another life decision. As many of you may know, I'm an all but declared double major in History and Philosophy, but now I'm thinking it may be time to cut my amount of majors in half. I was always planning to be a double major because History and Philosophy were the two things I really enjoyed, and I figured, why not get two degrees for the price of one? Plus, I knew that I wanted to go into teaching, but I wasn't really sure which subject I wanted to go for. But I did some soul searching the other night, and I decided that I didn't really want to be a Philosophy professor. Don't get me wrong, I could definitely do it. I actually think that out of the two, Philosophy is the one I personally would have an easier time making it in. So grad school wouldn't be an issue, doing well in grad school wouldn't be an issue, getting a job wouldn't be any bigger of an issue than it would be for anything else. But then I started thinking of the rest of my life. From employment on. And I started trying to envision a life in which my entire career was devoted to the study of philosophy. I would devote my entire profession to writing books and teaching kids about Hume and Kant. My whole life. I don't think I could do it.

The problem with devoting your life to philosophy, is that it's too easy for people to ignore. If a person wanted to, they could go their whole life without having more than 3 or so philosophical thought processes. Philosophy is just so irrelevant to people's real lives that it would be hard to make any one care about it. The only good students you'll be able to get are ones who are already kind of predisposed to thinking about philosophical problems.

This isn't the case at all with History. History has the happy fortune of permeating everyone's life in some way. Like it or not, you're a part of history and history has a profound effect on the way you live your life. That's something I can feel important doing. Teaching Philosophy would just be a constant reminder of the irrelevancy of my role in society. Teaching History would give me a pulpit from which to remind people of the importance of their actions and the gravity of their citizenship and actions. Which is definitely something I can get behind.

I'm still working this out, feel free to try and defend philosophy, I think many of you will find it's pretty tough.

The Beginning of the Beginning

2009-09-04T00:42:00.001-07:00

It's here. In full force. School is back on. The time is nigh for all of those summer reveries to whistle away with the August breeze. Now that school is back on, the real world is back on. In the summer, one is constantly living in the present. Every activity is in tribute to the day; what will you todoay? What fun will be had now? Why haven't I seen my friends lately? This is perfect for the summer. It's definitely the best time to be living in the present. One needs to be footloose and fancy free sometimes, it's good for the balance of the mind and spirit. Once the fall rolls around, summer comes to a close and school begins to start. Now your thoughts must be ripped from the ruts of thinking presently and thrown on to the open road of thinking of future plans. The beginning of college is the time to dust off your brain, make it remember its former agility, and begin thinking like a vigilant human being. The mind's eye now can be focused on the future as opposed to the present.

Classes are going well. Starting slowly, which is perfect. It's giving me plenty of time to get back into things. For those of you who need to be reminded, I'm taking: Modern Latin American History, European Intellectual History of the 19th Century, Philosophy of the Mind, and Astronomy. Not a bad schedule. Right now my most interesting class is Modern LA, but that's sure to change pretty quickly, by now it's the only one I've had two sessions of. I was hesitant about the class at first because as you may know, I've never been as interested in Latin American history as I was European, but it's actually turning out pretty well. Already in class we've discussed several problems of the region, and they've been taught well to the point that they really do seem like serious issues. I think that's kind of a big thing. Every class can be interesting if you present the problems correctly, it's just a matter of getting the students to really get into it and understanding why these problems exist and are so crucial.

Which brings me to professors/future plans. The time is long past to declare my majors. I'm still planning on doubling, History and Philosophy, all that's left to do now is get a couple of signatures and turn in the form. Once that's done, it's all official. My name will be on the email list and I'll get the major relevant emails, hopefully some important ones. Also I can start talking seriously to my advisors about how to achieve my post graduate goals. It's going to be a wild semester full of academic struggle and learning. I'll try and keep things updated.

2009-08-12T00:30:00.001-07:00

Come and feel the rain pour, I'll be all you need and more. The wonders of "Whatever You Like" radio and Rihanna. Hmm, up next is "Lose Yourself", perfect.

In case you were wondering, I'm currently sitting in my room, at 12:32am, wearing my new glasses and listening to the rain fail outside my open window. It's pretty chilled out. I'm wearing these new glasses right now, I got them at Buffalo Exchange. It's hard to really describe how they look, they're black rimmed, big, and awesome. You may ask if they're shaded. No. You may ask if they're perscription. Yes; perscription 0. You should be wary next time you see me in in them, it may take some getting used to, they may be an acquired sight. I know I definitely looked at them about 4 times on the rack before I decided on them. I knew I wanted them, but I just didn't want to be that fake glasses guy. Then I decided that if that was the only thing holding me back I had to do it.

After Buffalo Exchange I saw this movie "Moon". I actually enjoyed it. I was definitely skeptical, but it turned out to be alright. Interesting, worth a good think or two. If asked to describe it, I would say it's a bit like a psychological mystery? Something like that. It's about this guy who's doing a three year mission on the moon by himself, and he starts kind of thinking he's going crazy and stuff, so it's about him kind of going crazy and being a bit trapped on the moon. Check out the imdb summary if you want more than that, or go see it. $4.50 at CineMagic.

Lastly a note to all of my devoted and disappointed readers. I know that this summer hasn't been all you've hoped it would be in terms of post frequency. The fact is that I share your sadness. In the past couple weeks I've tried to throw out a few posts and I just wasn't feeling the level of magic that I know you've come to expect from my oeuvre. The fact is that writing is a constant reminder of the power of momentum. A being writing will remain writing and a being not writing will remain silent until acted upon by a momentous force. In my case, the force acting upon me is an overwhelming desire to say something meaningful. For weeks I've remained blogless because I felt I had nothing that was worth saying. But no one ever has something to blog about. That's not the reason to blog. Blogs rarely occur because the writer has something that the reader must know. Blogs rather occur because the writer writes something that he gives meaning. The writer assigns meaning to his posts through his voice and intention. The injection of meaning into words is the essence of the art of the written word.

I Gotta Feelin, that tonite's gunna be a good night, that tonite's gunna be a good good night.

Great Jorb Coach Z

2009-07-20T04:40:00.000-07:00

Good news. I recently pretty much got a job. I know, you're both surprised and excited. And nervous and enthralled. And also eager and feeling accomplished. At least you are if you're feeling anything like what I'm feeling. I'll give you a little backstory I suppose. For the past few months I've been combing craigslist for jobs that look awesome. You know, average hotel jobs, barista things and valet positions. Up until now I've had no luck. Possibly because this entire time my attached resume has been unopenable. Anyway, Thursday night I get this email out of the clear blue sky: 'Hey Andrew, I couldn't open your resume, but if you're still interested in the position, I'd love to give you a call, what's your number?' Now, I've applied to probably 25 jobs over the summer, so I have no idea which one he's referencing. That's the entire email so there are no clues as to what it might be all about. But of course, I shoot back an email immediately telling him I'm definitely interested and I give him my number. Instead of a call, I get an email back a bit later asking if I was available for an interview on Saturday at 8am.

Now I really don't know what to do. I'm already in too deep to ask what the position is. Asking him what the job even was now would look idiotic and flaky. I felt like Jerry who neglected to get the name of his girlfriend and would look rude if he asked her after they had already gone on a date. But since I wasn't about to forfeit this opportunity just because I didn't exactly know what it was I tried to think of an inventive way to trick the specifics of the job out of the guy. So I came up with an email telling him I was interested in the interview and inquiring about the address at which it would take place. I felt like once I got the address, I could just google search for it and I'd find something. He finally writes back saying that it's in the airport, I feel like a complete idiot. But then he says that there's a Coffee People right before security next to a Jamba Juice. Finally, I recognize the position. I probably applied for it two weeks ago, it was to be a barista at the airport Coffee People. Ironically, as a point of interest, this coffee people is located directly next to the Jamba Juice mentioned in this blog last summer. In that post, I chronicled my nervous quest to ask for an application.

So I go in on Saturday, B and E (bright and early), for my interview. The guy gets there and we start going on the interview. The night before I had prepped for all the tough interview questions I knew were probably coming (What's your biggest weakness, when was a time you helped someone without asking, explain a time when you worked as part of a team, etc.), he ended up not asking any of them. Instead he spent most of the interview asking me, in four different ways, if I really was able to get there for the early shift to open. Apparently he's been having a hard time with people sleeping in and missing their 3:30am shifts. Once I assured him with a few smiles that I could get there on time, and that I had a car of my own, he started talking about the security process I'd need to follow to become an employee. That's when I knew I was in it. You wouldn't tell someone they would need to be fingerprinted if you were blowing them off. Finally he said it, the words I needed to hear: "How soon can you start?" and "As fas as I'm concerned, you're hired." The guy hires me on the spot and says pretty much that as long as my background check shows that I'm not a terrorist I can start in the middle of next week. And then that was it, I should start my fingerprinting and stuff on Tuesday, and then be in training by Thursday or Friday. Success. Kind of. It's so late in the summer I get to work there for three weeks and then give the guy my 2 weeks notice. Damn. Still though, 8.40 an hour, plus the tips of a busy airport.

Heavily Strung

2009-07-12T17:05:00.000-07:00

I think I've mentioned before in this blog how my favorite show is Jeopardy. It really is. The thing about Jeopardy is that it never disappoints, the clues are always good, it's so reliable. You can have a really shitty day, boring life, horrible job, but you sit down at seven for Jeopardy and it all melts away. In that half hour, you're pitting your mind against three other smarty pants'. It feels pretty good. I'm usually pretty stoked when I get the final Jeopardy question right. I watched two episodes last night and got both of the questions right, so I'm felt pretty good. That's pretty much the one time in Jeopardy where you can really know if you're better than other people or not. In the regular questions, it almost always comes down to who can ring it in first. And you never know how good you'll really be at ringing in with the buzzer. Variable city. But in final jeopardy, you know you're in a fair fight. This one guy last night, his little pen didn't work, so he had to write his answer on a little paper, and when he had to hold it up, he knew he had won so he was shaking so badly, it was pretty cute. The category was historical names, and the clue was something like: Born at Chateau Chauviniac in 1757, he eventually became known as the 'hero of two worlds'. I'll post the answer at the bottom of this post, give this post a little added value.

On occasion before, I've used this blog to be a record of my prescience. I've often posted ideas here so that when they became popular there would be hard evidence that I had the idea first. The most ready example is when I predicted that Obama would choose Jim Webb to be his vice president. It didn't really turn out as well as I'd hoped. But I don't think anyone saw Biden coming. I also accurately predicted that McCain would choose Sarah Palin to be his vice president. In modesty though, I will say it was the obvious choice. But now I'd like to throw another idea into my innovative bank. I was riding the MAX the other day (Metropolitan Area Xpress for those who didn't know), and I was reading some of those boring poems they have near the ceiling to entertain riders on long journeys. None of these poems are more than 3 lines long, but they did such a poor job of holding my interest that I couldn't finish any of them. So I had the idea that the MAX should instead post up word jumbles to amuse riders. Word jumbles are perfect. They're simple, fun, and they can be done without extra paper or materials on the part of the rider, they can just be stared at and played. Also, they're interactive. A word jumble is an activity that an entire riding party can engage in. Jumbles can even bring formerely estranged riders together in the pursuit of an answer. Imagine, you're sitting next to this Portland urbanite that you have never met before, but you're both working on the same word jumble in the MAX. All of the sudden a whole section of the car gets involved in trying to figure out a particularly difficult one. Imagine it! The comraderie gained from 5 or 6 otherwise perfect strangers brought together by working out aigden (gained). Crime rates would drop, morale would skyrocket. Also, probably the best part about jumbles is that they would afford the great opportunity to do a Strongbad impression.

Who is General Lafeyette, French General and Revolutionary War hero?

I Hope You Don't Mind, That I've Put it Down In Words

2009-07-08T19:34:00.000-07:00

One week since my last post? Way too long. You know it's been too long when you're not exactly sure if that blog idea you've had is one you were going to blog or already blogged. What's happened since my last post? Not much. Illin. Chillin. Even some Grillin. Speaking of grilling, 4th of July happened. That was nice. Went up to Corbett with some people. Got ripped off. Apparently they charge you 5 bucks to go into an enclosure and sit on grass these days. That Corbett though, I'm sure that's how they run such a tight ship. Corbett may be a model city in these trying times. Nice, small, good looking, great school system. Corbett may have it all. Except for this terrible oldies cover band they had playing all night. Lame. And! They didn't even play the 1812 overture during their fireworks display! Fireworks displays are so much more American with the 1812 overture. You just can't get enough drama in the show without that cannon fire.

I've pretty much decided that I'm going to learn to cut my own hair. It's going to be a bold adventure. Because I always am looking for a good haircut, but I can never get a good one anyway, so I might as well save myself the 15 bucks and look cool doing it. How hard can it be right? I have to time this perfectly though so I cut it myself like, right after a sure thing job interview or right at the time where I've given up hope of getting a job at all. The consequences could be disastrous. I'll probably get a better hair cut anyway though, because I know what looks good. I just don't know how to do it. I've got the creative vision, that's the most difficult part anyway, it's just the execution that's killing me. It'll be cool though.

It's bike day tomorrow. Or Friday. Either tomorrow or Friday, Ivan and I are going over to Matt Judd's apartment and we're going to turn my bike into a mad dogging, street running machine. I'll be lightening, streamlining, envisioning, just overall bettering my bike into the sweetest piece of machinery ever. I've biking a lot more recently, over to Randall's and back and whatnot. It's not very far, but it's still much farther than I had been. In terms of overall lightening the load, I've got both front and back fenders and a basket that I really should get rid of to gain the most weight economy. But who in their right minds is taking off sick fenders and awesome baskets? I'll take off the back brake though. And my entire derailleur and 5 gear system. We'll see what we come up with on bike day. Valencia's going to be looking sick though. Fur sure.

Learn, Live, Succeed

2009-07-01T02:03:00.000-07:00

I was watching Orange County a few weeks ago; it's a movie about a kid who desperately wants to be a writer and go to Stanford, but he gets rejected and has to deal with mediocrity; anyway, I was watching it, and the kid said, on writing, that it took him a while to get started, but once he got going, it was easy. That's the point I want to get to in writing, where it just becomes kind of a habit to write things. Everyday. I'm sure there are some super genuis authors who would disagree with me, but I think that to become a good writer, you have to stop thinking in terms of isolated thoughts and abstract wonderings and start thinking more articulately and with more of a mind geared towards sentences that are both beautiful and efficient. Writing is a type of seduction. Every writer is trying to seduce their reader into a love affair with their work. As I'm sure we all know, seduction is an art that one becomes better at with practice. I'll admit that it takes creative genius to produce a peice that's truly great, but Da Vinci could never have painted his Mona Lisa without ever having any experience with a brush and canvas. Starry Night could not have had it's brilliance or significance if Van Gogh had never painted before in his life. Artists minds need some training.

I've started this list on my computer desktop. It started out just as a list of albums I need to give a listen to. And then I added movies I needed to watch to it. And now I've pretty much just added everything I want to do in my life to it. Among its items are my trip to the Yucatan Peninsula and 'Succeed'. I may need to break that one up a bit. But it's always nice to have a constant reminder of what you want. Sometimes you do forget. This way, if I'm ever bored or don't know what to do, I can see if it would fall under any of the items of my list. Feel free to steal this idea.

July isn't even three hours old and it already has 2 blog posts? At this rate I'll have a billion page views.

Where the Buffaloes Roam

2009-07-01T01:33:00.000-07:00

It's July, ugh, finally. Do you guys ever feel like summer just goes soooo slowly? Yeah, me neither. Seriously though, I doubt, out of all the summers to come, I will ever find one that goes slowly. Somehow these days just slip away, unnoticed by those who love them the most, never to be had again. I also doubt that I'll ever stop complaining about summers going by too quickly.

Took a little trip down Salem way on Saturday. Myself and a crack squad of house investigators went down to scope out the new house I'll be living in next year. First, the personell: we have Randall, chief in charge of decoration and artistic vision; we have Taylor, logistics and manager of making sure it's all on the cool side, he keeps things rockin; next we have Joel, communications and human relations director, in charge of liasing with local townies and various and sundry strangers. I think that all of us pretty much deemed it to be a sweet house. For those of you who are informatively challenged, I'm getting a house for next year, with 2 of the bros from the Ultimate team, and 4 girls that I hardly know. That makes for a total of 7 people living in this house. Awesome. I know what you're saying: Andrew, your last intergender living situation was a disaster! I hear you, and, putting the issue of whether or not it actually was a disaster aside, I've concluded that this house will be totally different. First of all, I'll have my own space. I've decided to make the garage my primary living space. This garage is going to be sweet. It's roughly a little bigger than the triple I had last year, and it has a giant door in the front! Those are pretty much the up sides. Down sides consist of a shortage of heat, a surplus of insects, and all the home repair opportunities I could ever want. So basically, you end up with a net result of Awesomeness.

I really am pretty excited about this house though. I don't know if many of you know this about me, but I have for a while, nursed a secret desire to actually have a place of my own. A provincial life in a property I can live in and through. Sort of a standing monument to my own creativity and hardwork. That being said, if any of you have a spare clawfoot tub lying around, be sure to let me know so I can score it for this garage. Man, I don't know how I'm going to live with all this new house stuff to do. Between being the man of a whole garage, making awesome food for myself full time, and school, it's looking like a full time job. I may have to cut down on my social calendar. On the plus side, I can just read books on my daily bicycle commute to school.... Right?

Speaking of reading books, I just finished this Bowerman biography tonight. Pretty good stuff. I really thought it was well written. The author was Kenny Moore, I guess he was one of Bowerman's track stars and like a 3 time Olympic marathon runner. That's pretty cool I guess. If you're into that kind of thing. Being a world class athlete and all. I'm sure there's something to be said about him having successful amounts of perspective, intimate knowledge and personal passion to write a good biography of the man. I do love a good biography though. I'm getting kind of tired of them now unfortunately, after Einstein and now Bowerman. And Walden was kind of a memoir. Since I alternate non fiction books with fiction, the next book on my list is the Tales of Beedle the Bard, yeah man, Harry Potter #7.25. Should be good stuff.

Fellas, This May Be Our Last Ride, but It's Our First Adventure

2009-06-26T20:29:00.000-07:00

The heart of summer is upon us. We're just now starting to realize that our summer goals are stalling. Our summer ideals are realizing their futility. Yep. It's the season of disappointment. Sure it's fun. It's fun to not have to do anything. For all responsibility to have become a memory. I hang out with friends and watch movies all day. Of course that's fun. It's been fun for the last month and a half. At a certain point though, you start wondering what it's all for. Is that really the way to conduct the life of a human being? Is it fulfilling, days full of idleness and frivolity? At a certain point, isn't it time to start doing something that will leave you with a sense of completion? There's only so much time a person can devote to relaxation before they start feeling the lag of sloth. At that moment, I guess there's only one thing left to do. Acheive.

I watched Almost Famous for the first time today. It was a pretty good movie. One of those good ones. It probably wasn't my favorite movie ever, but it was cool, it was good, it made you think, it kept you guessing, it made you care. If you haven't seen Almost Famous, it's the story of a 15 year old rock and roll journalist who gets a behind the scenes look at what it really takes to hold the rock and roll persona together. Good stuff. I think Kate Hudson is a little overrated in it though. Isn't it strange? It took me about 10 minutes to right the first paragraph, and only about one minute to write this one. Maybe I needed to warm up.

On a more literary note, the book I'm reading these days is still this biography of Bill Bowerman. It's pretty much as good as ever. Making me wish I was an amazing athlete and stuff, so that's always cool and fun and depressing. It's kind of weird sometimes though. Apparently Bill Bowerman was quite the prankster, like, he peed on people while they were in the shower and stuff haha, it's too bad you can't get away with things like that anymore. I haven't gotten to the part about Pre yet, I can't wait. I'm sure it will be the highlight.

It's On

2009-06-20T21:46:00.000-07:00

Man, I just got done watching some John Adams with the family. Have you guys heard of this John Adams? It's this awesome HBO miniseries about our second president and the revolutionary times he lived through. It's really well done, I highly recommend it. Anyway, the strange part was, I actually started crying during one part. If you're all avid readers of my blog, which I'm sure you are, you know that there are only two things that make me cry: the mentally challenged and something personal that I don't like to talk about. This scene in John Adams contained neither of those things. It was a scene in which the Continental Army was walking down a road right in front of the Adams farm, and the Adams' were giving the soldiers water out of cups and ladles and pots and stuff as they walked by. And I don't know what it was, but my eyes just started welling up. I mean it's like, these soldiers just charged into battle for a cause that matters more to them than their own lives, suffered major wounds, watched their friends and countrymen die, and now they have to walk along this road battered and bloodied. Along their way, they see this woman and her three children holding out water for them, they must be so ecstatic to see them; like, just when these men's lives couldn't get any worse from all the fatigue, pain and bloodshed they've just experienced, they see a glimmer of what they're fighting for as they walk along this road. These people are what it's all about! This woman and her children are the cause they were fighting for. And they recieve this shining light of support in their hour of need. I don't know, I just thought it was really moving I guess.

In other news, I just finished Eragon 3. Not too shabby. I did get a little mad when the young protagonist started shouting at his revered mentor/elder about issues regarding his family (last chapter of Harry Potter 5 anyone?), but all in all it was pretty good and I can't wait for the fourth and final book. Back in the salad days of the series, the author was calling it the Inheritance trilogy. Apparently he got a little big for his britches and has to extend it by one book, so now he's calling it the Inheritance Cycle. This guy obviously missed out on a sweet opportunity. How many four book serials are there? He could be a trail blazer. The Inheritance Orgy? The Inheritance Fourgy? The Inheritance 4orgy? Endless possibilities.

Girl, Come to Me

2009-06-20T01:25:00.000-07:00

Man, long time no blog, unacceptable. I went on a sweet bike ride the other day. It was just down to the Gresham MAX station and back to my house, but it felt so good. It was so empowering. I think that's what people really like about bikes. There's such an empowerment in being able to ride anywhere you want. The fact that I can travel anywhere in the city without being tied down to a car, that's something pretty special, and it's a pretty good feeling. Cars are so bulky. Not really physically, but mentally. Owning and operating a car takes up so much mental space. Not the driving part, driving's easy. Just the things you have to worry about. You've got to worry about gas, you've got to worry about insurance, and then because of those you have to worry about money. Worrying about money is the worst. Really the only reason I want to be rich when I'm an adult isn't really that I want to be some billionaire (although I do want a sail boat), it's just because I don't want to have to think about money. I don't want to have to make certain choices depending on what my financial scene is. I don't want to be controlled by money I guess. I don't want to turn down an amazing job offer because I wouldn't have the money to support my family. That would seriously suck. I don't want to tell my kids they can't go to a college because I can't pay for it. I don't want to ever have to sacrifice security or safety because I don't have enough money to afford it. That stuff is just super lame. I mean, as long as I have enough money, I don't mind thinking about bills or investments or anything like that. Just as soon as it starts cutting into my non financial life, it's no good.

Back to bikes though. Bicycling lets you not worry about any of that stuff. Bicycling is the best way to travel for free. Faster than walking and safer than hitchhiking. Plus it gives you one more thing to care about. Like I get to look forward to messing with it. Tinkering with my bike and stuff like that. I always liked the idea of messing around with my car, it was just so damn complicated and hard to do cool things to it. It's much easier to do cool things yourself with bikes, and cheaper too. Also, cycling promotes way more human interaction. Imagine if you were on a road filled with bicycles in place of all the cars. Everyone would be talking to everyone because they're right there, in the wild. Man, that's nuts, give that a think...

The Only Broken Hearted Loser You'll Ever Need

2009-06-15T22:36:00.000-07:00

I think the main reason I start blogging is just that once I have a sweet song stuck in my head I've already gotten over the hardest part of making a sweet post. Case in point:

A few days ago my grandparents were at my place, so, of course, we were watching a golf tournament. One of these so called golf pros, John Daly, was wearing the most hideous golf pants. These things were like, record setting crazy out there golf pants. It was like some kind of vibrant yellow and blue checkerboard pattern. So my mom, my grandmother and I, we're like, ok, what is with this guy's pants, is this actually the special olympics golf tournament or what? So in one of the breaks, they have these interviewers doing little spots with the golf pros, and this guy, Irish accent interviewer, is like "So John you've been playing pretty well today and I see as always you've got those out there pants on, how's that going?" and so the golf pro is like "Yeah yeah, of course, always wearing my golf pants, the Loudmouth clothing line is going really well." So instantly, I'm like, oh man, I need a pair of these pants, these are too cool. So I go online and shrek it out. Apparently it's this ENTIRE clothing line based around obnoxious golf pants. At this point we're all cracking up, looking at these designs, at one point, my grandmother, weirdo that she is is like; "Alright Andrew, if you want, I'll buy you a pair." Now I'm ecstatic, I browse around, narrowing down the surprisingly grand selection of outstanding golf pants to three hopefuls, finally I pick one and order it. It should be here by Thursday. I won't post a link to the pants I chose, because I want them to be a surprise, but trust me, they'll be amazing.

I probably won't post songs as often on my blog, I'm sure they horribly slow up my page load time. Catch that? Slow up? Urban tongue.

Prison Time is Slow Time

2009-06-14T00:51:00.000-07:00

Do you guys ever have moments where technology just sucks? Just these moments where you just question whether it's even worth it when there are this many stupid things happening. I got this new phone over spring break. And I've been wanting to put music on it, you know, for ringtone purposes and what not. But of course, it's not like you can just hook the phone to my computer with any regular USB cable, of which I have a million. But you have to buy this stupid seperate cable that only connects to samsung phones. So after months of looking for one that I wouldn't feel too mad about paying for, I got one today at Walmart. So I plug my phone in finally. Of course it doesn't work. Apparently I need to download some stupid V Cast music sync thing from the Verizon website. I don't know how familiar you are with this V Cast system, but it's the stupidest thing in the world. Why would I pay 40 dollars a month for internet on my phone just to pay $1.29 for every song I want on it? So anyway, I get this software and the thing still doesn't work, problem unknown. Ugh, I just want a Ratatat ringtone. To make matters worse, on my old phone, I could have done this in two seconds with a USB cable.

I think it's pretty interesting to think about things you like to do when you're stressed out. It's like whenever you feel like your life couldn't get any worse, you resort to these things because you know they'll make you feel better. At the times I have a stringed instrument, I always like to do that. Back when I had a guitar in my dorm room and when I had Chris' bass, I always played those when I was nervous or stressed. Other times, when my mind is going a mile a minute or I'm super upset, I clean stuff. Like, tidy up my room or clean my kitchen a bit. I don't know, weird stuff like that. It's got to be something like, you know that no matter what, doing these things is good for you. It's pretty easy stuff I guess too, doesn't take much thought. It doesn't really take much thought to practice chord fingering or putting clothes in a drawer, just time. Whatevs.

Don't forget to tip your urologist.

All in All

2009-06-10T23:09:00.001-07:00

I finished Walden last night. I don't know. It was ok I guess. I liked it a lot better at the beginning than I did at the end. I've moved on to Eragon 3, Brisingr. So far so good. I like to do this thing when I read books where I alternate fiction and non fiction. So up next I've got Bowerman, this book about Bill Bowerman, legendary University of Oregon track coach. Don't ask me why I chose that one, the answer's not even really that clear to me. I think I thought it would deal a lot more with his coaching methods, but I read a few pages a few months ago and it seems to be just a straight up biography. Hopefully as it progresses it will get into the interesting stuff. Actually, I know I'm enjoying Brisingr because I'm making pretty good time on it. I can probably do like 130 pages in a day on average. The thing is massive though, so it'll probably take me about a week and a half. One brick at a time.

I've been watching the NBA finals. I do love the finals. I don't regularly watch basketball, I mean, who has the time these days? But I do like the finals. It's the Orlando Magic against the LA Lakers for all the marbles. The LA Lakers. The LA Lamers more like. I'm definitely more of a Magic fan. The Lakers only have three things: experience, Kobe Bryant, and the ugliest player in the league, Taylor knows who I'm talking about. The Magic have talent, heart, resiliency and an adolescent vitality that you love to see succeed. They do have horrible looking uniforms though. I'll forgive that only because I know they've had a horrible franchise in the past. So far the series is 2-1 Lakers, best four out of seven. Really it just comes down to who wants it more. And who can shut down Kobe. Well, no one can really shut down Kobe, but it comes down to who can shut down everyone besides Kobe.

And It Rips Through The Night

2009-06-08T22:55:00.000-07:00

I figured out what I was going to blog about, finally. I saw this commercial the other day for Transitions lenses, you know, the glasses/ sunglasses that slowly turn from transparent to opaque depending on where you are. Anyway, the commercial I saw was this nature photographer wearing them on one of his shoots in the Amazon rainforest or whatever. I was just like, seriously? There's no way a professionaly nature photgrapher would wear ANY sunglasses as he was trying to get a shot. He'd have to be a complete idiot, his perception of the levels would be completely unreliable. Man, if you lost me on that jargon when I said 'levels' I was referring to levels of light. Try to keep up next time. Anyway, I just thought it was really funny and absurd to think that a professional photographer would wear sunglasses on a shoot. If I ever have a photographer who does that, he's fired. Especially if they're Transitions. That's one of the main reasons I don't let Cam Mathews take pictures of me.

I'm in love with 3 Beirut songs.

In case I ever create a facebook quiz about myself, I think that Titanic truly is my favorite movie. Leo is amazing. Also, in a stroke of casting genius, Kathy Bates as Molly Brown, a truly wondrous choice.

The shine is off the Walden apple. It started out really good, but this entire middle section, he's just going on about every bit of natural minutiae about the place he's living. Pages upon pages of ink spilled about the pickerel in Walden pond. I just don't really need four paragraphs about the mother rabbit living under his house. Hopefully he'll top me off with something amazing in the Conclusion. I'm almost done by the way, 62 more pages. Next stop... Eragon 3?

Randall and I are doing fantastically, thanks for wondering.

I have to start training for ultimate, it's seriously about time. There's this guy on the team who probably got on to Rhino, aka the best club team in Portland, so he's going to be all good once we get back, I'll be physically humiliated if I don't play at all. I haven't really played in like two weeks, so it's time to start getting it going again. On the plus side though, it's definitely not a mental issue. Mentally, I'm a pretty solid player, it's just my desperate lack of athleticism that's killing me. Even more so since I haven't had a good work out in a month. It's cool though, starting tomorrow I'm going to have to start dominating. That's not a problem. Unless my knee starts being a jerk. I bought a knee brace the other day at Target, but the smallest size they had was a medium, so it's a bit loose around my comically skinny legs. There's only one thing to do about that: Beast it up.

There's No Better Way to Honor A Traitor (Part 1 of Dunder Mifflin Infinity)

2009-06-07T02:45:00.000-07:00

Titanic was on TV tonight, who's got two thumbs and watched part of it?

I was just listening to the song you should be listening to now. And I was listening to it all quiet like because my mom's asleep. But then I was like, no man, I need to crank this to 11, the dynamics need to be paid their due. I think that's really true for some songs. I've had two completely different experiences with music based on two different volumes. Sometimes you just have tune in, turn up, and rock out. That may be my new life credo. The word credo is actually lifted directly from latin. It's a verb that means 'I believe'. Makes sense yeah?

Do you guys ever have something you know you wanted to blog about earlier in the day but you forgot about it once it became time to actually put up? Me neither. Haha, that's a joke directly out of last blog season. If you don't know what I'm talking about you clearly need to read all of my previous posts again.

So, if you've ever had a blog, you may know about a thing called Google Analytics (trade secrets -->) Anal Goog is great because it can tell you some pretty specific information about the people who visit your site. Think of it as a hit counter, but awesome. So, I know that someone is visiting my blog from a place called Seal Rock, Oregon. Seal Rock, for those of you who don't know, is a town/village perched right on the waistline of the Oregon coast. Located directly in the middle of the coast, Seal Rock is home to one of you out there. I have no idea who the hell you are. I tried all the tricks, you know, looking through my facebook to see which of my friends was from Seal Rock, no avail. If you so choose, you can treat me to your identity. Or feel free to use an anonymous comment hinting at who you are and make me work for it. Or be a jerk and don't do anything.

We were playing mafia tonight at Mason's graduation party, the circle kind, not the hide and seek kind, and people were trying to accuse me of being a mafiosa. And someone was like 'look he's touching his mouth, you can tell he's lying'. So of course, I went into the the methods of detecting a liar, as dictated by Dwight Schrute, and I said the liar will perspire. Of course, since they're all high schoolers, none of them laughed. I could have used some of you there to bolster my joke. And to tell me that the liar will also avoid eye contact.

D-O to the double G

2009-06-06T00:57:00.000-07:00

One of the things I like most about my grandparents coming in is talking to my grandfather about his crazy political views. My grandfather, long time Republican, just voted democratically for probably the first time in his life in this last election. An Obamiracle. Of course though, he's rubbing it all in our faces now because the country wasn't instantly fixed since his inauguration. And he's pretty giddy that Obama is adopting some of Bush's policies. But that's only because he thinks that my mom and I are bleeding heart liberals. Contrary to his beliefs, we are not, in fact, idiots. I recognize that Bush is not a complete idiot. Anyone who thinks he's an idiot is an idiot themselves. Because if he's an idiot, and he became the most powerful person on earth, than anyone who thinks he's an idiot must be some kind of super idiot, way stupider than him.

Anyway, specifically my grandfather and I were getting into a sweet discussion about so called 'Government Motors' (GM). Of course, my grandfather, the self proclaimed hard hearted realist, says that Obama should have either let GM sink into bankruptcy or leaned on the unions harder to ease up on requirements for workers. See, my grandfather is under the false impression that it was the unions that sunk GM. That's not it at all. It was faulty management. And that is a problem that can be solved by radical government intervention.

For years, american auto's bread and butter has been big, 'manly', tough trucks and SUVs, the crowned jewel in its coronet of course being the Hummer. 2 or 3 years ago, this country got a wake up call by the alarm clock known as Al Gore and we all started thinking about global warming and ways to reduce our carbon footprint (also due in part to the skyrocketing rise in oil prices). So now, from that point on, people aren't looking for American muscle in a car. They're not looking for more car than they need just so they can satisfy an inferiority complex. Americans are turning to look at reasonably sized cars, not trucks and SUVs. Americans start looking East, so to speak. They find Toyota Pria, Camrys, Corollas, Honda Insights and Accords. Volkswagen Golfs, Mini Coopers. Meanwhile, Ford is still running ads for trucks that are so 'tuff' they can drive down a riverbed. Who the fuck is driving down riverbeds? Apparently no one. American auto suffers record drops in revenue for the next three years and now they're up a dry creek without even a pick up truck to drive them out of it. Everyone except Detriot recognized that the times were changing, they picked up on the trend towards smaller cars, more fuel efficient cars, hybrids. What's GM's response? The Chevy Volt? A car that seems like a joke, two years too late? Gobama.

I Ain't Changed, But I Know I Ain't Bob Dylan

2009-06-05T00:35:00.000-07:00

One of these days, probably some day I'm bored 5 years from now, I'm going to look back over all of these blog posts and really do some thinking about what kind of person I was. It's going to be fascinating. I was reading through some of my journal entries from like 3 years ago, there's some good stuff in there. I didn't write in it enough. As I was reading I wanted to know more about what was going on, what I was really feeling, I wanted some more details on myself. Even though it was me, I had forgotten some of the things I really worried about. I already have forgotten what it was like to live in high school, what was life like you know?

I think it's even more interesting not to think of it from the stand point of looking at what it was like then, but looking at it as what it was like before now. Like, the kind of person I was in high school and the things I thought about, and the things I cared about. I'd love to see how I changed specifically, and how I acted before I was who I am today. I guess the only way to do that is to write as much as you can constantly, and then look back and compare years.

To what end? Good question. To know more about yourself perhaps; to change even more. To make yourself into an even better person, correcting imperfections, tweaking flaws. I think it's pretty important to know exactly who you are. If you don't, it's pretty easy to have a lot of problems. Part of knowing who you are comes with growing up, you always hear about finding yourself I guess. But I think that probably a lot of people stop there. Once they hit 27 or 30, they stop trying to become better people, they just stop changing. That's a big flaw right there. You've always got to keep changing for the better. It's not about being a perfect person, it's about trying to be. Perfection may be unattainable, but it's pursuit definitely is not, and that may be the greatest lesson to be learned. Back to Thoreau.

About a Bear

2009-06-04T00:26:00.000-07:00

Ok, so this post isn't about a bear. Mostly because I don't know any bears. That's really the only reason I guess. Otherwise it definitely would be.

I was doing some more future thought, it's going to be good stuff, I really can't wait to get my life underway. Well, more underway. The plan for these next two years is just attack school. I'm going to just wage war on these subjects, throwing myself into these professors with everything I've got. I did the whole experimental college student thing for a while. That was fun, and I can still do it sometimes, but now's the time to be a scholastic warrior. Andrew v Knowledge. I'm guaranteed to win. Odds on, heavy favorite. So, I'll be doing that for two years.

Then, after I graduate college as the coolest person ever, I'll take the LSAT, rock it, refuse to go to law school, and take some time off from school. I think I only told few people about my plan for the LSAT. My mom won't let me go to law school (something about lawyers being the scum of the universe and her being a massive generalist), but the LSAT is pretty much the MCAT of non medicine. Basically, besides the GRE, the LSAT is the premier test for people who don't want to be lame doctors. So, I'll take it, just to brag about how good my score is for the rest of my life. That way, for eternity I can say things like: 'Ugh, why didn't I go to law school?! I scored in the 95th percentile on my LSAT!" It's going to be the best decision of my life.

Anyway, after college I'm going to try and score a spot in the Peace Corps. It's pretty much the sweetest gig ever. I'll be away for two years, saving lives, feeling like an amazing human being, and I'll just hang out, help people, and write a book. I'll take that two years, and write whatever book I've always wanted to write. It's guaranteed to be good because it'll have all the perspective of someone getting away from it all and reflecting. Then, after I'm done in the peace corps, I'll feel amazing about life, have a book written, and have the peace corps to put on any resume for the rest of my life, a great way to get into graduate school and become a professor. All by the time I'm 24. I love my twenties already. Alright, Craig out, time to get smart.

It's All For the Pageviews

2009-06-02T02:01:00.000-07:00

This summer is going to be all about skill building. Summer is the time for people without jobs to take a step back and actually accomplish some life goals. There's all this free time just waiting to be harnessed and twisted into something useful. Like a balloon animal. I think there are only five things I really want to be doing this summer. Reading, Writing, Playing Ultimate, Socializing, and Listening to music. And watching Jeopardy. Anything other than those... six things has to be a waste of my time. It could either be a necessary waste or (more likely) an unnecessary one. Summer goals. I think I've already talked here about the importance of setting goals. I still stand by that. Summer goals 09: Get good at Ultimate, write 20 blogs a month, learn to speak fluent Chinese. 2 out of 3 is pretty good. Should I set a goal about how many books I want to read? Maybe, I don't know, I'm cookin Walden right now, after that, who knows. Usually I like to alternate fiction and non fiction, you know balance it out a bit, so maybe I'll read Eragon 3. But maybe I won't. Stay tuned for the stunning conclusion to that tale. Once I actually do it though, I am doing a pretty solid reading pace. These Walden pages are pretty short so I can do like 100 in a day. I should definitely be able to finish it within the week.

My grandparents are coming later this week too, I can't wait. I love my grandparents. It took me a while to really realize it, but I think they're pretty cool. Grandparents are sweet because they always want to talk to you about whatever you want, they've got to be some of the most approachable people in the world. At least mine are. But I think it's pretty common for grandparents in general to just be so glad to talk to someone who's not their spouse or their peer that they down to converse about anything. I mean, sure, you have to put up with some stupid questions, you know, What's an internet and what can I catch with one, stuff like that. But I think it's worth it. Maybe. Some grandparents don't make the cut. You've got the patronizers, you know, the ones who don't actually say any of their thoughts, it's just a variation on you being great. Then, closely related, you've got the condescenders, I will say that I hate these condescenders, these are the grandparents who are like, Back when I was listening to music we listened to it on records, but I bet you don't even know what a record looks like. Come on. I know what a fucking record looks like, I'm not some kind of giant idiot. It's not as though I'm in this mindset where, if I don't use it everyday I have no idea what the hell it is. Come on grandparents. This is getting way too long, who know grandparents would take up this much blog space. They must be pretty flattered. Moral of the story though is that my grandparents are like this, and they rock. Craig out.

Summer Skull

2009-06-02T01:29:00.000-07:00

June? Already? Where did my May go? Whatevs though, I can dig June. I can't dig May being over, but I can dig June. I always felt like June and July were always competing for the same role in the year. June and July, they're already mostly spelled the same, can't we just merge the two into one giant month? Right in the middle? Like an overgrown median between two highways. January through May is the adventurous Westbound, and August through December is the slightly more reverent, classic Eastbound. I may write to Obama to propose the merger between June and July. I think he'd be down for that. Is he enough of a socialist yet? Obamother Russia? We'll see how this country's looking in 20 years, get ready for a big supernation, the USASSR.

I'm reading Walden these days, I'm about 40 percent through it. So far I'm pretty disappointed. In all of you people who said it was bad. You guys are nuts, Walden may be one of my favorite books so far. It's so quotable. Love the quotability. There's this section on studying classics that I may bust out whenever one of my lame acquaintances tries to think they're better than me be asking the "use" of studying classics. The use is that I can punch them in the face.

In case any of you were wondering what I'm up to these days, my current agenda is looking like this; this is generally the same every day; Wake up roughly 11-12 hours after I went to sleep the night before, check my email about 20 times, get angry that no more episodes of Law and Order: Criminal Intent have been Tivo'd since I went to sleep, get the mail, give Lauren Wagner the finger, check my email another 20 times, then remember to check Facebook 20 times, close a few of Lauren Wagner's Facebook chat windows, shower, read about 3 pages of Walden because, since I just got out of the shower I'm feeling productive, eat dinner, try and find something to watch online, watch/dominate Jeopardy, text Lauren Wagner telling her that I love her, and then fall asleep watching episodes of Law and Order: Criminal Intent. That's a little thing I like to call a 13 hour day.

A Polaroid is Worth 1,000 Shakes

2009-05-27T01:44:00.000-07:00

If you're man enough:

A Million Ways to Change and No Way to Stay the Same

2009-05-17T00:25:00.000-07:00

Blogging isn't dead, old blogging is.

I know we're all scared of change out there, and I know we'd all like everything to stay the same. Everyone likes to get comfortable in a routine. They do call it comfort for a reason after all. But what if comfortable isn't always what you want to be? Or at least, not always what you should be? Is it ever what you should be? When is it really ok to stagnate? Should we ever cease growing? Maybe change is what's actually better for us. Maybe comfort's not all it's made out to be.

She was all like 'Heyyyy', I was all like 'Whoa.'

People don't understand how good motivational speeches are. Srsly. (ROFL). I mean, I think most people aren't very self motivated. They may be minorly self motivated, like to the point of completing simple tasks and acheiving relatively accomplishable goals. But I think it's pretty rare for someone to be so self motivated that they give something everything they've got with out any source of outside influence. The keyword here is obviously everything. No one knows what their everything is. Or where it is. Or even how to find it. It's easy to think of people saying things like, 'even I didn't know I could run that fast' or 'yeah, I thought I was too tired, but I had to keep going'. These are the points in people's capabilities that can only be reached in the most dire of circumstances. Everyone holds something back. To a point. The trick is convincing the body or the mind not to. I think it's pretty rare for people to have that kind of will in themselves. Mostly because they don't know what their everything is. This is where motivational speeches come in. Whenever you feel like you can't go on. Or whenever you feel like there's no point. Sometimes it just takes that little extra. It can be something as picturesque as a coach motivating a team at half time, or something as simple as a smile from your favorite girl. Except for those posters with the one word virtue and the stupid picture above it. Those don't count.

What Do You Call a Blind Dinosaur?

2009-04-07T18:01:00.000-07:00

Do you think he saurus.

We were talking in my German history class today about a film we had watched about the oppression and censorship in East Germany; one of the greater things that came out of Eastern Germany was some really solid literature. They couldn't publish it there, but East German writers had their stuff smuggled to West Germany to be published and then it was redistributed back into East Germany via the black market. Anyway, one of the things that happened was, after the wall came down, you saw this huge drop off in the quality of Literature and the production of the writers. So this got us into this whole discussion of how desperate times often produce some of the most compelling artwork. If you think about books like War and Peace, things by Doestoevsky, those are pieces written bleak as hell Russia. It can't be a coincidence that the country with an astonishing history of poverty and dysfunction has produced some of the great pieces of literature. The same goes for Grapes of Wrath, great book on most accounts, would it have been possible without the inspiration and drive of the Great Depression? Undetermined.

I'm definitely not sure. I think that great art, not just written, but all kinds, comes from the successful translation of a powerful emotion. Art is pretty much the practice of translating emotions. The stronger the emotion, the stronger the resonance. No one's ever heard of a good book about something genuinely boring. So it takes a strong emotion, and pain, despair, anguish, yearning for change, these are all powerful feelings that often lend themselves to art; but can't a powerfully happy feeling do the same thing? What about a great work of art that translates joy? It seems sound in theory, but all stories always have a conflict involved, it's the bad news that makes the story good, all the good news does it make you feel good in the end really. I was listening to this thing on NPR about how people always want to hear bad news more than they want to hear good news, especially in bad times. In times of extreme depression or oppression, how many people are looking to hear a story about things that are going well? It seems like people might want their spirit lifted, but for example, in our poor economy, would you read a story describing how bad our economy is or describing how good South Africa's economy is?

I Think Therefore I Am a Subject of Time

2009-03-25T15:47:00.001-07:00

So Chris deleted his blog, the end of an era you know. All that sentimental stuff. Chris rounded it out with what, 700 blog posts? Who's keeping track? But then again, who's caring? Apparently I am. Or so it would seem from the introduction to this blog.

Spring break is in full swing. I feel like it just started and it's almost over at the same time. This kind of thing is starting to happen more and more, I feel the weeks slipping by, each one passes faster than the next, joining their comrades in longing memory. The weekend I stayed up all night watching the Amazing Race is so vivid, but it was at least four weeks ago, probably five. I guess you remember the times you enjoy the most though, or the times that are the most obviously monumental in your life. I can barely remember that party I went to in November, but I'll never forget the one in September. It's strange to think that your mind prioritizes things that way, it's not purely time sensitive. Dozens of other criteria factor into the equation of what your mind holds dear. But that's probably painting the wrong picture. It's not likely that the mind works with equations. Despite its scientific makeup that can only be deciphered using mathematics and biology, the mind operates in a way that transcends all of those things. Emotions, feelings, thoughts, ideas; those are the things that can't be figured out via hard science. More and more it seems as though the brain is the convergence of the explainable and the unfathomable. With each quantifiable breakthrough, we are tugged back with a mental emotion that can never be quantified. The mind keeps us on a short leash, giving us everything but what we want most.

I figure I'm probably the only person weird enough to go to Borders twice in one day. I swear though, if I had my way, I'd live there. Build a second story, put in a bed and a kitchen and I'd be set. Move it right next to a good jazz venue and I'd never leave. But as I was sitting in Borders, reading the introduction to On the Road for what I'm pretty sure was the second time in my life, I was instantly transported outside of it. I know that I have way too many books to read this summer already, but On the Road is being moved the the top of the queue. I have virtually no idea what this book is, but I know that I need to read it. The introduction talks about Jack Kerouac's life and his experience as a key member of the beat movement, living in Greenwich Village. The thing about Kerouac is that he started out completely average, probably even better than average. He was this high school football All Star, getting a football scholarship to Columbia. Once he gets there he does this archetypal turnabout and ditches school to focus on his writing full time. I mean, how many football stars do you know that become famous novelists? People of creativity have always fascinated me though. That's such a life. One that demands complete confidence yet instills total fear. In order to say to yourself that you're going to be a full time writer is a statement that requires you to believe you're the type of writer who can really change how people think. To have that attitude in mind, while knowing that most "writers" are complete rubbish who never make it, must take such a conviction and dedication to your art form. It's hard to imagine. It starts to become clear why so many professional creatives turn to alcohol.

2009-03-08T20:57:00.000-07:00

Just got done with some solid episodes of The Office. Diwali and the one where they think the Scranton branch is going to close but really the Stamford branch does. There are two parts of the Office that I really do find immensely fascinating. Any part where the characters are talking to the camera is great, I love any and all camera interaction. Because it just doesn't make any sense as to what they're doing there. The characters acknowledge the cameras sometimes? Is it supposed to be some kind of documentary? The real world style, reality television? It's such a mystery

The other parts of the Office I love is anytime it's revealed that Micheal is actually a good boss. This is probably one of the subtlest parts of the Office and I think that very few people actually pick up on it. Micheal doesn't ever seem like it, but he really is a good boss. He's definitely stupid and insensitive to a lot of things, but Micheal truly does care about the company and his employees. I think that one of the biggest things you can take away from the Office is the importance of people in the workplace. And Micheal does care about all of them, he puts their happiness above everything else. I mean, sure Micheal is a complete idiot most of the time, but as soon as he shows up at Pam's art show when no one else does, that's when you know that Micheal is better than any boss that she's ever had or will have. Micheal would never betray his company. The fact that he understands the importance of everyone having their own birthday party and Jim doesn't is one of the most interesting parts of the series. Micheal definitely thought about doing a group birthday but he decided not to because he knew how important it was for people to feel recognized on their birthday, and he chooses that over the increased productivity. This is almost certainly because Micheal had this depraved friendless childhood, but it turned him into a great salesman, and he really is a good boss.

Watermelon Stand

2009-02-22T23:52:00.000-08:00

If you're anything like me, you pretty easily lose your focus. I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about. Or at least you should if you've ever read a boring book. Unfortunately your focus is one of the most powerful tools you have. Focus can make all the difference sometimes. My most ready example has to be Ultimate. It may not be a giant secret that our practices aren't always the most... sincere. So it's pretty easy to just kind of hang out and watch the game, even when you're on the field. It sounds pretty bad when I put it like that, but I'm just saying that if you're not in the right frame of mind, your game can go out the window. It's not difficult to give up when it's easy. But you can't do it. Take a lesson from Tisbury Lane and stand strong. This is all really to say that college is a great place to get distracted. It's easy to get caught up in the things you don't really care about and ignore the things you care about most. Girls are a good example. As always. The opposite sex is always a classic distraction, I'm sure they're high on the list of everyone's favorite day dreams. But how is this making any sense? Why isn't German History distracting me from the ladies? I like it well enough, I think it's pretty interesting when I'm not getting distracted from it. What is it about the things you know you're not supposed to be thinking about that makes them so hard to not think about? Who decides? Did I decide? Is this some kind of instinctual business? That can't really be because Ultimate is another one of my favorite distractions. I guess there might be something to do with the amount of fun I'm having with these distractions. I don't know, see, I'm getting all distracted during this post! It's ridiculous. The point is keep the focus. Currently all I really know is that I'm fucking smart and that I want to get a lot fucking smarter.

I went on a run on... Saturday. It was better. I still need to be a beast.

I'm doing this thing these days with my iTunes. Sort by album and play it straight down the list. 19 days of straight music, this will probably take me about a month to do it all. Currently I'm on Double Dutch by The Eames Era. I've already really been tempted to break it up. I really wanted to listen to Bowl of Oranges earlier. And then Tisbury Lane... Gets me everytime. Watermelon Stand.

So Sick of Saying Sorry

2009-02-17T21:09:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, well, a lot of times, I think that peoples egos really get in the way of things. Specifically, I'm talking about telling people things they need to know. It's not really a secret that Willamette has a... developing Ultimate team. We're pretty young, we have a bunch of freshmen who don't know what the hell they're doing or supposed to be doing. But it's always hard to tell people they're doing something wrong without telling them that they're horrible. A lot of people, upon hearing that they're not good at something they like doing will just uproar and get all defensive and not listen to a word they're being told and maybe even never come back to the team, stuff like that. I don't think I really want those people to be my teammates anyway though. All their pride is doing is telling everyone that they care more about feeling good than being good. It just means that they care more about themselves than the sport and never really wanted to play at all. People who really want to play need to know that for the first year or so of playing this game they won't be good, but it's so much more worth it once you've actually made progress as a player. The problem with people is that they get all mad when you tell them they're not good players. But thinking you're good when you're not is probably one of the worst things you can do as a beginning player. Not knowing how you need to improve is a sure fire to stagnate and not grow. This can apply to pretty much everything too. School, live, work, I'm sure you can adapt the analogy yourselves. The point is though that you need to know what you want. If you'd rather have fun for two hours than actually learn something that's fine, but just don't get upset when you find out you haven't learned anything.

In other news, I'm super mad at this guy because he said I wasn't a good nuclear physicist.

Just When You Think You Had Me Figured Out, I Pull You Back In

2009-02-17T20:51:00.000-08:00

In an effort to get more in shape for Ultimate I tried to start running again today. It was probably one of the worst runs of my life. I was doing this supposedly easy two mile loop, but I just could not do it, I wasn't even that chest tired, I just didn't have the drive to keep it rolling. Everytime I wanted to stop I had no one telling me not to. I think it may have had something to do with not actually listening to music. I was listening to this podcast, that may have hit my intensity a bit. When you're listening to a podcast you're in full concentration on what they're talking about. You can't be concentrating on a run, you need your mind to be wandering with no intentions of ever coming to a close. The minute you start thinking about one thing, you start to think about other things and eventually you're thinking about running again and you're just out of it. Because no one in their right mind, thinking rationally, would keep running when they don't have to.

I was watching this TED talk the other day, it was by this author and she was talking about how sometimes the burden of success really destroyed people, mainly creative people. She went on about how hard it was for a creative person to continue being successful once they've already done something great. A lot of writers and things always resort to alcoholism or depression as a refuge from their stress and whatnot. She kept on talking about this crap about how we shouldn't think of creativity as a property of the individual but rather as a force that gets channeled through the individual. That way when an individual isn't as creative as they were they don't have to take it as a blow to their character or whatever. For me, I just think all of this has to go back to people's egos and doing things for the wrong reasons. Anyone who writes because they want to be famous or a great author is a giant idiot and will never be truly accomplished. Creation is something that happens because people have to. Good painting doesn't happen because the artist wants to be successful, it happens because they have to show the world what they see in their mind. It's the same with writing. Good writing is about telling people something. It should never be about success. Popular opinion is always secondary, while personal fulfillment is always primary.

Don't be a stranger.

You Told Me You Wanted to Eat off My Sandwich, part 2

2009-01-13T03:50:00.000-08:00

So far none of you have commented on how nice my new background is. It's starting to sound like you guys aren't devoted readers... At least pretend. Well, it's a polylblog night, as I'm sure you've noticed at this point. Sorry haters.

I just scrolled through Chris' last several blogs looking for intriguing comments. If you ever feel minutely bad about yourself, it's a pretty good pick me up. Sam plugging her new blog. A few 'I agree's, that's largely it. Over at chrisjennes.blogspot.com he calls comments thoughts. I kind of think that's giving a few of those comments too much credit. On the flip side of that I call my whole blog A Bigger Meaning, so I guess titles aren't really reliable reflections of what's within. Case in point, titles aren't reflections, they're representations. If you caught that give yourself a slap on the back, if you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, give yourself a slap on the face.

So, I was semi listening to Sarah Alibabaie's presentation the other night, not too bad. It was about the Israel/Palestine conflict. Some interesting points. It really makes you think about property rights in a way. In case you're as uninformed as I was previous to Sarah's talk, there's a huge dispute over who owns the land currently known as Israel and the Gaza Strip, it's basically Jerusalem and Friends. So on the one hand you've got Israel, and on the other, you've got Palestine/Hamas (Hamas = anti semitic militant extremists). And, I think currently, as in, right this minute, the two hands are attacking eachother. Much to the chagrin of the civilians who are getting blown up in the crossfire. I don't know, I mean, it's really horrible that civilians are being injured and killed, but I'm not sure I really see the fault in fighting to secure your land. Since both sides view it as theirs, that's pretty much what they're both doing. I mean, it may sound horrible, but I definitely see a fairness in better/bigger army having a right to some choice land. If you take the civilians out of it, and put into it all voluntary soldiers, I'm not really seeing a problem. Obviously diplomacy is preferrable, but if the involved parties elect not to use it, that's their fault. Any general who's not an idiot would only employ combat as a last resort right? I know a bunch of people out there hate the military and whatnot, but I don't think that the military is as cavalier and macho as they're made out to be. Any kind of active combat is going to have soldier retention risks, and definitely military big wigs want to kill as few soldiers as possible; even from sole practical reasons, excluding moral ones. Peace is definitely great and whatnot, but I think it's ignorant to say that it's the answer to everything. Isn't it necessary for some things not to have a peaceful solution? Law of averages? No one was advocating for a peaceful solution to the Nazi's. As terrible as it is to say, sometimes violence is the answer.

Sophomore Slump or Comeback of the Year?

2009-01-13T03:31:00.000-08:00

Man, I don't know what it is, but I am definitely in some kind of slump. Or maybe I just don't listen to enough Fall Out Boy. There are probably a million things I should be doing, I've literally been doing nothing for the past three hours. I was so bored I went on a drive just for fun. At like 1:30am. It was definitely scary though, my wallet is currently MIA so I was driving sans license, and of course it's late at night so the only cars on the road are cops. So naturally, within 5 minutes of pulling out of my driveway I run a questionable yellow light right in front of a cop. He didn't pull me over though. But I'll tell you what, my foot was hovering that gas pedal just in case I had to gun it. I ain't never goin back there. The other scary part was that I had just driven down Powell like 5 miles so I was down around 130th. I'm not normally one to lock the doors from the inside, but you know how it is down at 130th. Even a brother is lucky to escape without cappin some scrub. Just sayin'. You know you're bored when you're resorting to trying to entertain yourself through something you're writing. I think that's probably what the best comedy comes from, just an intense state of boredom. I'm talking like, entrenched shit. When I say best comedy, feel free to read 'worst' there. I won't take it personally. It's just business.

I was watching the show Burn Notice like 5 months ago, and there was this guy who was supposed to be real tough you know, and he walks up to this friend of his who's getting some sun by the pool of his hotel. Tough McGruff just kind of stands over this guy with a kind of pitying look at him; as a retort to this look, the guy says: "Hey man, tanning is both an art and a science" I guess I found that to be pretty funny at the time, it stuck in my mind anyway.

I'm pretty sure that in the future it's all going to be one uniform for all of humanity, so, in preparation, I propose this:

As If You Needed Inspiration

2009-01-03T22:56:00.000-08:00

I think that it's pretty common knowledge that the reason why I do most of my blogging is to serve as a replacement for all kinds of journaling and written reflection. But as far as methods of written reflection go, blogging this way is a pretty poor one. You can only use it when you're connected to the internet, with a computer in hand. And anything you write here has to be subject to the scrutiny of anyone in the world. Generally I tell myself that that's an advantage because it lets all of you out there know what my thoughts and feelings are; knowledge all the more better for you to understand and appreciate me with. But naturally, that transparency does have a down side. I can't criticize you all for being idiots. I can't criticize anyone you know for being an idiot. It's general, common problems like that that can get me down. As they would anyone I'm sure. Luckily, there's a new reason to blog in town, the long distance reminiscence. The ability to look back, ten or twenty years down the road and have some modicum of realization as to who the Andrew Craig of 2009 really was and was not. I'm not really talking about this for myself because a journal could provide this same comfort. As easy as it would be to look at my blog in 15 years, it would be just as easy (if not easier) to look at a journal. The people I'm really enabling here are my kids. Thanks to this blog, my children, and for that matter any future generations, will be able to know what their elderly father was like as a 20 year old babe magnet. Doubtless they will come to the conclusion that he was a vain, sophomoric imbecile who hasn't changed at all. I know all of this child talk sounds like the dreamy abstract talk of someone who needs to focus on the present, who's talking about kids at this age? Not even to mention the fact that IF blogger is still around in 15+ years, this blog may not be. It all must sound like pointless idealism. But idealism would never hurt anybody.

My Fingers Smell Like Tangerines

2009-01-01T01:38:00.000-08:00

It's been about 4 days since I've been back in Troutdale and I can already remember how easy it is to get nothing done here. It's just a town full of distractions. Whether it's shoveling snow, hanging out with friends, or helping my mom cook dinner, there's always something for me to do here and not much time for me to not do anything. Well, that's not entirely true because I have watched about 20 episodes of Scrubs over the past two days. But that's just the nature of this place, you know, it's so much easier to get nothing done in Troutdale. In college it's always go go go; you're there for a specific purpose, the whole reason you're that that geographical place is to fulfill a purpose. So even if it's in the back of your mind sometimes, you still know that basically you're there to be educating yourself. Troutdale, man, what are we in Troutdale for? The whole reason we're all here is to waste time until you get sick of it and want to come back to school. That's the system working perfectly. The entire plan is as follows: educate them until they feel like they're about to kill themselves, then give them a break until they get bored as hell and want to come back, then repeat. All according to plan. So it's just kind of hard to be doing any of the things that make me into a non sedentary, focused person. I'm working against years of academic strategy.

It hasn't been all bad though, there are people here to see that are cool. One can have some fun. But every visit, every hang out, every party is always accented with that sense that it's all temporary. "When are you going back to school" "I'll be here all January". After that it's all back to normal. We stay here just long enough to fall into a routine again, then we're uprooted and sent back to where we belong. From here on all the arrows are pointing out of Troutdale. I'll be back here for (hopefully only) part of the summer, and the winter, and the summer. And then what? After school then what? I'm never living here again. Just visiting. But it's a long visit. Almost long enough to make it seem like you're home, but always short enough to stop you from falling in love with it. We all say we're going home when we come back. But is this our home? Is college our home? Both are sharply temporal. In Troutdale it's only a month, but in Salem it's only two and a half more years. I can't stay. I'm never living anywhere that I don't know when I'll leave. I'm merely jumping back and forth until I can go find a home. Right now though, I'm homeless.

The Best 3/4 Song There Is

2008-12-25T00:19:00.000-08:00

SeeqPod - Playable Search

I don't know how many times this song has to be put into a blog, but we're clearly not there yet. Some songs are just magical. Or at least they just feel that way. Does anyone just have certain songs that instantly conjure up certain thoughts? I mean, aren't there just some songs that you inseperably identify with some things? No matter where you are, or who you are now, some songs just bring you right back to who you were and where you'd been. I spend a lot of time reminiscing as it is, but some songs just put me over the edge. Some songs you just don't forget about. Some people you just don't forget about. And you know you won't. If you ever start, there's a song to bring you right back. For me, listening to this song brings me to walking around the Trout at night, like I do all the time when I'm home. That's probably one of the things I like most about Troutdale, walking around at night, 11am, 2am, everywhere in between, just thinking about who you are. Getting your culture. Thinking about people you wish you looked good side by side with. Sometimes it doesn't even make me think about things about myself, the thought of love you know. A feeling where the stars don't mean anything as long as you're in love. All you need is something to eat and drink and a place that's not far off the mainway. That's all. Nothing else has to matter.

This light looks good on you.

Being Prepared for the Best

2008-12-24T01:43:00.000-08:00

News from the Yukon. Man, you know what I really like about Montana? The little things. I mean, they don't serve Royales with Cheese, but when I was in the Albertsons here the other day, I was cruising the aisles, looking for some razors. Shavers. Whatevers. And this woman rolls her cart past me with a full keg of beer in it. It was the classic double take, I took one look and thought nothing of it, but then I just turned and stared at her. It was just this giant silver keg and she was finishing up buying her groceries like it was no big thing. And I mean, I guess it wasn't really, they sell them in the beer section. The best part was that when we were checking out, buying some lottery tickets, we saw the same woman again, this time, there was a guy behind her with another keg on a hand truck, the two of them proceeded to wheel both kegs out to her car. My mom asked me why that woman possible needed so much beer, I just figured she was getting ready for a long winter.

I'll give you guys the secret to these songs I put at the end. They're usually just whatever I'm listening to on iTunes when I'm done writing. Dust has only just begun to fall....

The Chin You're In

2008-12-20T01:38:00.000-08:00

-14 in the Great White North. Weird things start happening when it gets that cold, you step outside, and your nose is immediately running, but it's so cold, all of the snot residing in your nostril freezes instantly, but then you breath warm air out your nose and the snot thaws again. It's just this endless cycle in your nose between frozen and regular snot. About every 10 seconds. It's pretty mind blowing what happens to the human body at extreme temperatures. Things here are good though, except for the bitter cold.

We watch and read a lot of news here, it's all about current political events. Today it was the auto bailout. So I guess what happened, somehow, the big 3 American car manufacturers got themselves into a bunch of financial trouble and were projecting bankruptcy, so they petitioned the government for money. The only reason the government even considered it was because those companies employ like half a million people or something like that. Thus the government is faced with the decision to either essentially lay off half a million people or give the companies the money. It sounds like an easy decision, it's definitely not about having the money, but bailing out these companies kind of spits in the face of the American economic system. Government funded companies are kind of spitting in the face of capitalism. According to the principles of the free market, this is a natural market occurence that comes with the territory. A government funded automobile manufacturer sounds a lot like socialism, kind of the antithesis of American ideals. I don't know about this one; on the one hand I say, of course, save the jobs, a complete free market doesn't work anyway, but then on the other hand I say that I love the free market, and promoting a company that doesn't effectively sustain itself just because it's a fixture in the American economy effectively stifles opportunities for new companies to arise. If Chrysler, Ford and GM went under, it would be made clear that the whatever business practices they engaged in that led to this crisis would be unacceptable and the industry standards would heighten. Any opinions?

I Will Crush Your Pretty Toenails Into a Thousand Pieces

2008-12-18T21:34:00.000-08:00

I'm in Helena these days, it's freaking nuts, I'm pretty sure the temperature right now is hanging out at -5 degrees. I don't know how this place sustains life. Montana's a great vacation though, everything moves a bit slower here, you can count on hanging out with the Grandparents; the grandfather will always be sitting in that giant chair reading his book. No one's allowed to sit in that chair except for him. Generally, my mother, my grandfather and I sit in a big square in the living room and read, my mother and I on two couches, my grandfather in his chair on another side, and the fireplace on the final side. Then, the grandmother will always be in that other room watching television while everyone outside is wondering why she doesn't actually do something. She's not unintelligent, she's pretty smart, she just chooses to sit and watch the news, all day, and sit and play Bejeweled, all day. In Helena, it's great that no one really bothers you about anything. I mean, your mom does need you to hang an ornament on the top of the tree every so often, but it's not really that much trouble. All in all, it's really just a great place to be while you're missing home, missing friends, and missing school.

-5 degrees of what? How do I know your -5 is the same as my -5? Who's in charge of the regulation of these temperatures? Is temperature discrete or continuous? What's the ratio of mercury to tube diameter to get an accurate thermometer? How do electric thermometers work? Oh, all the questions I need to ask a weatherman...

Sometimes, the Greatest Gain is the Hardest Loss

2008-12-11T16:34:00.001-08:00

It seems that life may simply amount to a struggle of changing inertia. It feels unnatural and forced to change your attitude when there is nothing external forcing you to. My demeanor in motion will stay in motion unless it is acted upon by an outside force, or, it turns out, an inside one. Take the summer. You're rolling along, doing, nothing but waking up at noon and staying up until 2, watching any number of television shows, hanging out with any number of friends, being as unproductive as possible, how easy is it to bring all of that to a crashing halt and start waking up at a reasonable hour, reading all the books you want to, and actually do something worth your time? I don't know if you guys have ever tried to do a little Latin study before school actually starts, but it's probably the hardest thing in the world. The notion of switching your brain into academic mode, after it's been on loafing mode for 2 months is nearly inconcievable. Unfortunately this applies to the school year as well. The difficulty of writing my Nietzsche paper grows exponentially as a function of how many episodes of the Office I've watched just previously. It's quite astounding. It works to the converse too. If you've ever felt bored, you're suffering from a lack of material to exercise your productive momentum on. You do transition, but it is a slow and irritating waste of human thought.

Inertia is easily observed in blogging trends, when you're blogging everyday, it feels only natural to blog the next day, but when you haven't written anything in 3 weeks, you're suddenly struck with how amazing it is that you have absolutely nothing to write about. This has been my experience anyway. When you're at rest or in motion, it just takes a push in the opposite direction to get the ball rolling the other way. It can be the most counter intuitive thing in the world to go for a run at Willamette when you haven't run at all since the end of summer, but if you ever want to do it, you have to assert your will. It's never going to feel right to do something you're not comfortable with, that's why it's called not being comfortable. Sometimes it's just for the best, you need to be able to push yourself. That's the real test of wills, making yourself do something you're not comfortable doing, whether it's asking someone on a date, going for a run, or just starting a paper. All it comes down to is will and desire, you need to feel that drive to actually perform when you know you need to but you know you don't want to.

Love Away is Spite at Home

2008-12-05T17:05:00.000-08:00

It's the week of class before finals week. Glorious. I already got my huge presentation out of the way, now I have nothing to do at all until Monday. Well, I have things to do, but I don't have anything due until next Monday. What more could a guy ask for, a free week at college among all of the friends.

I was at thanksgiving the other week, with all the family members I see once too often a year; of course they're all asking me what I'm doing, Willamette and whatnot. I don't know what it is, but these relatives are finding me way too interesting and taking way too much of a vested interest in my life and times. So everyone always asks me what I'm doing in school, so I say History and Philosophy double major right? And then I'll throw in that I'm going to law school just to have the fun of telling such a fundamental lie to family members. But then, my great aunt Kay dropped this bomb on me: "Why are you studying those? What interests you about History and Philosophy?" This question pretty much just dropped me out of the conversation, I mean, I didn't konw what to say right? So I've been thinking about the answer I should have given ever since, and I still don't have something good I can rely on. You know, I don't know, I like to think about that stuff, it's fun for me? What am I supposed to say here? It sounds like something I would be able to devote my life to without killing myself? I guess I'll keep searching for the answer.

If You Call Me, I Won't Be Home

2008-11-30T01:57:00.000-08:00

It was Schopenhauer who said that life swings like a pendulum between pain and boredom. That has to be right. Have you ever had an experience of intense curiosity followed directly by an experience of intense boredom once the opportunity to quench your curious nature presented itself? Have you ever wanted nothing more to get away from it all and take a break, then once you get the opportunity all you want to do is stop living like an ignorant sloth? Have you ever wanted something with the knowledge that you wouldn't want it once you could have it? And then, have you ever wondered what kind of person you are for feeling this way? Yeah. Me neither.

About once every two months, on average, I'm really into college football. Throughout the entire, I don't really care who's 3rd and goal, but sprinkled throughout my life, for a few times, it will be all that matters. I think I love the comaraderie of it. There's something about asking someone if they saw the game on Saturday that I just can't get over. I don't even really know what most of the things going on in that game are. I've got no idea what a running back is, but I assume it's about twice as good as a half back. Maybe three times as good as a tail back? The thing about college football, as opposed to professional football, is that it's so much more relatable. I don't know the first thing about these people running around the field on Monday nights, getting paid millions of dollars to stay strong and stay healthy. But the people I can identify with are the people who are my own age, balancing playing televised football on the weekends with getting a college degree on the weekdays. I can imagine what it may be like to catch a winning touch down pass on Saturday night, and then on Monday morning, go into your Latin 231 classroom ready to take notes about Livy. That makes more sense to me anyway.

Empty Words I've Always Heard

2008-11-25T18:10:00.000-08:00

Isn't it strange how one thing someone says can shake you so badly? How one comment from someone you know and trust can make you question your entire being? Just like, everything you thought you were wanted to be just becomes completely trite and meaningless through the perspective of this one comment. It may sound arrogant to say, but I think I'm right most of the time about most of the things I make a decision about. It sounds arrogant, but when you think of the alternative, isn't it only natural? Why would I come to a conclusion that I felt was false or weak? I would just come to a different conclusion. I think everyone always thinks they're right, they just don't like to admit it because they're afraid of people thinking they're jerks. I don't really care if you think I'm a jerk, as long as it's for a good reason. If you have a fundamental problem with who I am, that's fine with me. I'm not going to change my personality to ameliorate your anger, I'm not going to turn into a fake person just to keep you as a friend. You're not worth me betraying myself. Haha, this isn't aimed at anyone in particular, just kind of for future reference I suppose. It's just like, if I know you don't like something about who I am, I'm not going to change for you. If you don't like me, we shouldn't be friends, and we shouldn't even pretend we are. I totally sound anti social right now, but I'm not that way at all. I love my friends, they don't know it, but they're one of the few things I care about and would do anything for. I also love myself though. Not in the narcissistic, self absorbed way, but in the way that you should love yourself. If you don't love yourself, you're doing something wrong. If there's something you don't like about yourself you should change it. But at the same time, if there's something you don't like about yourself, then that's not really yourself. I like to think I'm not ordinary. Everyone's an individual, but some people want to be and others hate that they are. I like to think I love being an individual, and it's my personality that makes me that way. If I'm not myself then I'm not anyone. I don't think I could take that.

I love a good cry. Do you guys ever feel like you don't cry enough? I do. I've cried recently, but I don't remember what I was doing, watching a movie I think. As a lot of you know, there are only really two things that can make me cry, the mentally challenged, and something else that's pretty personal so I won't talk about it, but maybe if you ask me I'll tell you. I like to cry, crying is one of the few things you know is real. Anyone can fake a smile, some people can fake a cry, but it's more about yourself anyway. Crying about something is one of the real ways to know that you care about it. I don't know, that doesn't make any sense, but I think you guys get it.

The Sin You're In

2008-11-15T00:05:00.000-08:00

Dodged a bullet today. Roommates can't keep me down. I've got a thing too good to quit.

I wrote that the other day, along with 8 other blogs that I'm keeping in my drafts.

So I'm playing some of this guitar, I've got about a barely recognizable 6 songs kind of down, well, just the chorus, but that's still pretty good. But now I've got to start using this pick, it's like all this work I've done is completely eradicated. Clearly my right hand has to relearn, because it has to learn how to hold the pick, but also my left hand has to start over because since the pick pulls the strings so much harder, my fingers aren't holding the strings down sufficiently, so I've got a sweet rattle. If I were to compare it to something else, it would definitely be like playing matched all of your life, and then switching to traditional, it's that much of a shock. You definitely start asking yourself why you switched in the first place. It's all worth it though to play Wonderwall, it's all about the music man, fo sho.

Thanksgiving is right around the corner, everyone's always talking about how great it will be to get home and see their families. I guess I'm pretty excited for that too. I don't know, I'm just really looking forward to taking a break. Maxin and relaxin. But then some other times, I'm thinking about how great it will be to get all this work done over the break. We'll see which one will win out. I think we all already know. Thanksgiving is such an awkward break, because as soon as we come back, it's like 2 weeks of classes, then finals week and then the semester's over. So the year's pretty much done for by Thanksgiving, everything after it is just coasting to the finish. Then we have a whole month for winter break.

No shave November, probably the quickest month of my life. It's already the 18? Wild. Just yesterday I was walking around on Halloween in a poncho, sombrero and clean shaven face.

This Blog Is Only Wishful Thinking

2008-11-12T20:46:00.000-08:00

Dude, The Fighting Artichokes will be going all the way this season in the CoEd Flag Football league. We're going to win in the playoffs for sure. You all know what that means, the coveted Intramural Champions T shirt. Only a select few people have them, those who have won an intramural league. One time before I've come close to winning one of these t shirts. It was my first week at Willamette. It was a freshman class wide grass volleyball tournament. The grass was green that day and so were we. The teams were our opening days groups. We had a slow start, but as our fists got used to the flight of that volleyball, the courts were ours. Serve, dig, set, spike, repeat. It was August, so we basked in the hot sun as well as our wins. One by one, teams were eliminated, courts that at the beginning of the day stood to the brim with unathletic freshman, now stood bare in mourning of their loser inhabitants. The bracket killed us, our third to last game, wringers. Damn. The team of Intramural coordinators, all of these kids were at least a year older than us and dedicated their extracurricular lives to IM sports. The matches were best two out of three. They won the first game, we came back and rallied to win the second, it would all come down to this last game to 15. It was win by two, so the final score ended up being 17-15 them. Aaagh! Defeat: that spiteful beast that can't help but smile once it knocks you down. The IM team demolished the other freshman team in the finals, but they got the T Shirts anyway. If we hadn't been up against the wringers in the semis we would have dominated by far.

It's weird how you go into blogs thinking you're going to write about one thing, but end up going off on a tangent on something completely different. I think in the literary business they call that bad writing. Whatevs. You should have seen what I was going to write about an hour ago, I typed it out but I decided not to publish it. I think I'm going to just start saying that more, just making wild claims about how many blogs are in my drafts folder. I really wrote about 8 blogs today, they're all just drafts though, I decided to go another direction.

I was thinking about Kraft singles the other day. They were really starting to make me mad. They say they're singles, but they come in packs of 10... How are there multiple singles in one pack? It's not a single, its 1/10. They should be called Kraft Tenths. In every other walk of life, if you saw two singles together, they would be a double. If you ordered two single cheeseburgers, they certainly wouldn't be wrapped in the same wrapper. It's just little things like that that I think the food packaging industry should think a bit harder about. Do they think we're idiots? How many singles are they going to sell before they call it a multiple? 20? 30? 100? One of these "singles" is not equal to one. The pack is one. One of the singles is merely a part of the pack, it's not equal to one unit. I just don't know sometimes...

Kick Out With Your......

2008-11-06T20:15:00.000-08:00

Foot.

Sickos.

Well, it's true, I completely missed my 100th post, it just passed me by like a train headed for rock stardom. And here was me, busy looking at the timetables. I think I'll survive though, I mean, my 100th post isn't that big of a deal, there are no plans that I had made that no will never come to fruition, it's not as though I ordered a bunch of chairs and balloons that I was storing in my neighbor's apartment or anything. I did get a box of brownie mix for the occasion. But I figure I'll just save it and use it for my 200th blog post. If I miss that one I won't know what I'll do. I'll just be resigned to the fact that I truly don't care about these blogtennials. Centenniblogs. If anyone shouldn't be worrying about centenniblogs, it's the ever over expressive, emotive Chris Jenness over there, blog 450? Or am I just showing my age again? I think we all know what he's looking forword to. Milleniblog. Blogennium? We'll see.

Speaking of things we'll see about, the grad school hunt is still on and underway, I've got Yale in my sights and I'm watching it runaway from me with the hopes that I'll gain some new tracking skills that will allow me to pursue it. To aid me in the chase is my secret weapon. Havas. Identity: Current Philosophy Professor/ Prospective Advisor. Credentials: Grad School at Harvard, taught at Yale. If any one is qualified enough on paper to get me into Yale, it's this guy. Can I get into Yale Grad? I'm sure it's possible. Not just in the way that philosophically, anything is possible, but also in the way that it's possible for my brain to get into Yale and be a Yale brain. It will take some sacrifices. First to go will be all of the time I spend doing nothing. After that I'll have to see... I've certainly got the drive. Well, that's not entirely the right thing to say. I certainly think that I've got the drive right now. Only time will tell if I have the drive. Fantasy time? Go to Yale grad, find my brilliance, graduate, do something, and then teach Philosophy/History at Yale, my idealized Alma Mater. Besides that being sweet, it's even better because my children, Dennis Huckleberry Craig and Audrey TBD Craig will get into Yale easily as long as they want to and don't completely blow it. So it's a win win win win. Plus I get to live in Connecticut and be snooty. And, I'm shallow enough that I'll be extremely happy teaching at a prestigious institution such as Yale. Pretty much the hard part right now is getting in. And by getting in, I mean dominating undergrad.

The only thing that can throw a single rain drop on to my parade right now is if Jenness gets into Harvard Med. So, I'm kind of expecting that, because if Jenness, let's call him Moby Dick, can't get into Harvard Med, there's no way I can get into Yale. Well, no, that's not quite right. If I can get into Yale, there's no way Moby can't get into Harvard Med. There we go. Do we fight for the right to a night at the opera?

A Crown of Gold, a Heart That's Harder Than Stone

2008-11-02T15:41:00.001-08:00

I am freaking out right now. I'm listening to way too much Brand New, not doing nearly enough homework and practicing 3 songs way too much on the guitar. I've seriously thought about writing songs way too many times, all of this acoustic guitar is going to my head. I'm thinking things like, man, why didn't I ever get into guitar in high school, and I could have gotten in on a band. High school is definitely the perfect time to start a band. You've got nothing to do and no reasons to do anything productive. Sure music takes up all your time, but what else are you going to do with it? You don't need a job, you don't have anything to do at school, you might as well just write music and develop mad shredding skills. Plus you've got like 4 years worth of Christmases and Birthdays to get guitar stuff like amps and pedals and whatnot.

Rocking out with your cock out is definitely the best way to go I'd say. Right now, Jesse Lacey's life is looking super preferrable to mine. Sure he never went to college, but he's got art on his side, so no one would ever accuse him of being dumb or unintelligent. He's not the biggest star in the world, but he's got such a healthy fan base, he doesn't even have to worry about it. He's doing fine on money. Brand New is right in that pocket where you completely rock and everyone who matters knows it, but you're not so famous that you can't just drop everything if you wanted to and just say fuck it to the whole music stardom thing. Like, I may do a little bit better on my Rome final than he would, but in terms of everything else, he's got me beat for sure. Except for that whole incident with his best friend.

A Fine Way to Find a Way

2008-10-14T14:26:00.000-07:00

I don't know why, but I feel like I'm always starting these blogs up like 7 minutes before I have class. Something inside me is really wanting me to blog right before I go to class. Maybe it's because I haven't done the reading for my next class, so I'm subconciously trying to take my mind off of it. It'll be good though, who cares.

Sometimes I feel like I wish my job could just be to write song titles. All of these blog titles are perfectly able to double as song titles as well. And somehow I feel the market is bigger for writing song titles than blog titles. Well, I guess the job markets are both at zero because I'm pretty sure no one would ever pay you just to write a title. Some days you just can't win.

I saw Anberlin the other night, it was amazing. Whenever I go to shows, I'm almost spending the whole time thinking about what life would be like as some kind of rock star. Going on tour, fans, studio time, playing the same songs so often that you can truly call them your own, things like that. Also, every time I tell myself that I would never play large venues. Stadiums, arenas, hell no. That's not my bag, just play three small ones instead of one big one. Smaller shows are so much better, so much more personable. So much cheaper, that's what it's all about you know. Just kind of helping out the fans. I mean, it's about money too, I won't throw money out of it. But come on. Anberlin is making enough money right now. Weezer definitely is too. If you need more money than Weezer has right now, there is definitely something wrong with you. Hire a god damn financial planner and start playing small shows, problems solved. I guess there's a bit of an ego thing going on with playing some kind of huge sold out arena, but who cares. If your ego is so damaged that it can only be inflated with a huge arena show, and not three sold out small shows, there's also something wrong with you. And if that's the kind of ego you have, you probably don't make good music anyway, so you're probably not even going to sell out your arenas.

I still hate crowdsurfers.

Part 98 on the Road to 100

2008-10-10T18:34:00.000-07:00

It's coming up you guys, my 100th blog post. Two more. It's going to be one hell of a celebration. I might even find a graphic to commemorate the occassion.

It was definitely brought up before school started that I would probably stop blogging as much because I was so busy with school. Naturally, I scoffed at this idea, just as I scoff at many ideas that aren't my own. "Ha!" I said, "Are you joking? I will in fact be blogging more! With two Philosophy classes on my plate, the blogs will be plentiful, and the visits will be high." That was the idea. On a sidenote, I'm a freshman in college and I have absolutely no idea how to do punctuation inside those quotation marks; it is a complete mystery to me. Back on the main note. Clearly, it seems, I stand corrected, in my haste, I didn't realize the sheer fact that even though I have 2 Philosophy classes on my plate, I actually barely understand any part of them, so in fact, I have nothing to blog about. That's way too bad. Both of my classes are talking about the same Nietzsche book right now, The Gay Science, what's he talking about now? It's hard to say... Oh, of course. Nietzsche claims that God is dead and he's talking about the multitude of ways that this affects our lives. Nietzsche says that even if you don't believe in God in the first place, his death affects your life anyway. Most of it is the same crap about things like, where do you get your moral center in the world without God, things like that. I mean, of course, God's dead, religious views are out the window. Metaphysical views, probably also out the window, where does my view of how crazy things like Platonic forms come from if I have no concept of a perfect world outside of my own? Who knows right? Ethical views? Maybe, I mean, supposedly, there's no moral compass, things like that. I don't know it's a tough point to prove.

In other news, it turns out that we actually have no idea if the reason the Roman Empire fell was because of Barbarians or not. Fun fact. We're talking about that a crap load in Rome's Decline and Fall.. Or not. That's the title of the class, the 'or not' and all. So it's a totally historiographical look at all of this Rome stuff. Luckily for the course syllabus, Rome is an ancient empire, and we have relatively no actual evidence about what was going on back there.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that I'll blog more. Right now I'm going to dinner. Late style.

I'm Starting to Feel We Stayed Together out of Fear

2008-09-20T19:08:00.000-07:00

It is time for us all to decide who are/ Do we fight for the right to a night at the opera now?

It really is guys. Pretty much everyone who's reading this. It's probably the hardest question you'll ever ask yourself. Who am I? Some people never figure it out. Some people think they have. Just look at their 'About Me's. It really kind of begs the question though, who am I, and who do I want to be? They're kind of the same question if you think about it. What you want is the type of person you are. The things you value in your life are pretty much the only things that identify you from anyone else. Whoa! This is starting to sound way too much like every other blog I write. That's unacceptable.

As far as I'm concerned, for those it may concern, I'm doing alright. School is alright. I'm just kind of doing regular stuff, 4 classes. They're kind of hard, but I can do it, so I guess they're at just the right level. Ultimate, excellent as always. Living with 2 girls, whatever. I don't think girls and guys are as different as everyone says they are. I mean, you know, they're not as different as we'd like them to be. I think it's just kind of sexism. We've got to find some way to legitimate all of this discrimination. We're different! That was the only downfall in the discrimination of blacks, we tried to say that black people weren't like white people at all, but then we found out that we were all the same and it was only a matter of time. I'm not just saying this to say that we shouldn't discriminate against women. A little discrimination makes you enormously stronger as a person. A lot of women will say that our society today isn't equal, and it's probably not, but the inequality is negligable. The discrimination of the modern day is nothing that a determined woman can't overcome. If you can't overcome this modicum of discrimination, you don't really deserve to in my opinion. You want to have it as easy as the guys do, but then you want to complain when you see some giant male idiot in a position of power? And you still want us to hold doors open for you? Come on ladies.

Doing All We Can To Live, Thrive and Survive

2008-09-16T22:08:00.000-07:00

I think if I ever needed another hobby, it would be photography. That's a pretty good hobby I think. It gets a main showcase on Facebook and there are all sorts of sweet applications. Wallpapers. Picture frames. Life size posters. Things like that. Plus I could look like an idiot and post Photography in my Facebook interests. I would like Facebook to have a disinterests section. So I can tell you all what I don't like. I'm sure some people would let it go creative.

I just had a bit of a diversion with my room about Lust. The sin, not the... well, I guess just the fact that it's a sin. I should start a list of everything about Christianity that doesn't make sense. Wait, I don't have that much time. Burn. I don't know, I just don't see the point of calling something that everyone does a sin. Doesn't it just devalue the entire notion of sin? Should Lust really be on the same level as Wrath? Hold on, isn't everyone afraid of God's wrath? Is God a sinner? I'll let you guys take it from there.

The whole reason I started this blog though, I've been working on this theory that I first heard about in Anthro a few years ago, that everything we do is to appear more attractive to the opposite sex. Seriously. If you start breaking it down, every decision you make can really be brought back to improving your chances of mating. I mean that's the idea of looking good to girls right, mating. We're talking in anthro terms here, so bear with me. A hot counter to this one would be like, No way, I do such and such because I want to, it's not for the ladies. But you know, you can just get that going back to why do you want to? It makes you feel good. Why do you feel good? Because..... you're more attractive to the opposite sex. It's all on an instinctual level and whatnot. Some things are obvious. Working out. Brushing your teeth. Showering. Some of them aren't so obvious. Being smart? School stuff? The idea there is that you can appeal to the ladies (or gentlemen) with the aid of your superior intellect or higher salary potential. I'll come back to this, give it a think through.

Ultimate, You Know It.

2008-09-10T22:18:00.000-07:00

Haha, some thing's never change, it's like last year all over again. I could not concentrate on my reading tonight, I was way too distracted with Ultimate. Every time I started a paragraph, my mind wandered to the tournament this weekend and how sweet it would be if I was Raw. Capital R. On a sidenote, if any of you guys want to see some amazing Ultimate, go to Reed College this weekend, all of the best club teams in the area are going to be there. No universities, but the best club team in Oregon, and a team made up of all the players who were on that team last year. It's going to be amazing. The only reason I'm going is because Salem has a bit of a team and I guess Willamette is a big talent pool of theirs. Bush League All Stars. I don't know how well we'll do, but it will definitely be an event. If you're at all interested, hit me up and ask me about it.

But anyway, a few times, I was coming back to this idea of really getting into Ultimate. Just like, taking it seriously. Historically (last year), we just kind of half ass practiced twice a week and drank and practiced once a week. But you can't but let the mind wander to how it would be to be freaking amazing. Team work outs. Conditioning. Weight room seshes. The possibilities are endless. I'll float it to a few of the other members of the team. School always gets in the way. Actually, school doesn't really get in the way. Being social really gets in the way. Because if your life was solely devoted to school and Ultimate, you could easily be amazing at both. But once you start thinking about friending, socializing, blogging. Then times get tight. It would still be great though.

If Kierkegaard's Appealing, Then Philosophy's an Addiction

2008-09-10T15:22:00.000-07:00

It's gotten to the point where I'm starting to look forward to these Philosophy classes. Both of them. Latin and Rome are good too, but Nietzsche and Existentialism is really where the story's at right now. I guess it's just fun to think about stuff, and it's not an exhausting reading either, like history readings just put me to sleep, but philosophy is stuff is pretty interesting, and most of it is pretty short too, so that's not that big of a deal. So now, it's looking a lot more appealing to dump my History major and just full force it with Philosophy. I don't know. A Phil major sounds really cool, but it's just like, what the hell am I going to do? I mean, profess of course, but that's pretty much it. And I feel like devoting my life to Philosophy has a bit of an issue with fulfillment. I feel like all too often I would just be asking my self "Seriously, what the hell am I doing?" I guess that's a good question for a Philosophy major to be asking himself though. But I'm a bit too afraid the answer is nothing. Best case scenario, I land a job that I enjoy at a prestigious university. I'm teaching kids about Kierkegaard and Camus? It's just like, what's the point? This may be something I need to talk to Havas about. That's my Philosophy professor right. I don't know, I'll talk to him about it at some point.

It really is great though. Existentialism, we're reading some Kierkegaard right now, looking at the story at Abraham and Isaac, am I right bible dorks? If you don't know, Abraham is the story of a man who's asked by God to sacrifice his son Isaac, so Abraham is faced with this fat dilemma, you know, where does his allegiance lie? As the story goes, Abraham is completely willing to sacrifice Isaac so he's about to do it, but since Abraham passed the test of Allegiance, God lets Isaac off the hook. So what this essay we're reading is about is whether or not Abraham is truly a role model or not. Is a murderer or not? Religious fanatic? It's pretty heavy stuff.

Ich bin ein Berliner

2008-09-07T17:54:00.000-07:00

We're really getting into it in my Nietzsche class right now, we're reading The Birth of Tragedy, and it's a book kind of about Greek tragedy and why we like it. If you've ever read any Greek tragedy, you know they're these kind of dark, bleak plays that always end in the main character being castrated or brutally murdered or something like that. Oedipus? Killed his father married his mother? Antigone? That sort of thing. So the book is kind of talking about why we like reading these things. Like, why do we like reading these stories of bad things always happening to good people. Or at least, why do the Greeks.

Anyway, Nietzsche is tying the whole thing into Germany and kind of what it means to be German. He says that Greek tragedies were essential to building the Greek culture and identifying what it meant to be Greek. According to my professor, that's a thing that the Germans were (are) really struggling with. It's really funny though, because there are two German exchange students in our class, and he's always making jokes about Hitler and stuff. He'll say like "The Germans for a long time struggled with the idea of what it means to be German, what things and ideas characterize them. Of course we all know how that turned out." So then, every American student in the class is kind of working on this nervous laughter because we're afraid that the German students are going to get all mad about it. They were cool about it though, they were laughing with the rest of us. I guess that's kind of the type of thing you really have to laugh at though. Helps the medicine go down.

Yo Quiero....

2008-09-07T17:44:00.000-07:00

It's really all coming down to motivation these days. Motivation, how to get what you want. What do you want? That's probably the hardest question you'll ever ask yourself. Maybe the hardest question there is. Well, maybe not the hardest, but definitely the one that matters the most. Once you figure out what you want, the only obstacle is getting it. And that's not an obstacle at all once you know. Problems only arise when you don't know what you want. "Man, I really want to finish this reading, but I also want to go to Target with my friends." What do you want more? Finish the reading now, get it over with, or be more sociable? People just want it all, they get greedy. Yeah, they want to be an amazing student, but whoa, they also want to be the most popular kid in school. Good luck with that one. I want to be the smartest in my class, but I also want to not be a complete loser. It gets rough, when you have issues like that.

So I don't know if anyone knows what they want. I know I don't actually. If I did, my life would be a lot easier. If I hated everything except for one thing, my life would be a breeze. I would just say, you know what, everything besides drumming just isn't worth it. That would be all it takes. I would always practice because playing would be the only thing I wanted to do. I wouldn't go to a normal college or study a career because I wouldn't care about making money. I wouldn't run out of time to practice because I wasn't even tempted to go to that party. What are the 5 things you want?

Along the Vast Quad. Past the Flowing Plaza

2008-09-06T13:04:00.000-07:00

Alright guys, we're almost one week in to the college season, it's getting good. We're right in the meaty part of the transition, where classes still aren't as hard as they're going to be, but they're still twice as hard as anything you've done before. You still don't remember everyone's names, but you're still 5 times more sociable than you were in the summer. On the plus side though, we still haven't fell into bad habits of going to bed at 2 on school nights, and it's not a big deal if you walk around your hall with out pants on. The shower curtain is about an inch too narrow so you have a half inch gap on both sides? Who cares anymore? Probably the best part though, we all still have the time to blog. And read all of our assignments twice.

In case any of you were wondering how things are going, they're doing alright. Living with two girls, yeah, I know, there are a lot of you doubters out there, but so far it's doing fine. I mean, yeah, a part of my dies inside every time PMS is brought up, but you know, it's a small price to pay. The one thing I didn't anticipate though, who knew, was all of this talk about hot guys. Pretty much all the time, at least one of them is talking about such and such hot guy who's in their class, or who lives next door to us. After a while it kind of starts to make you doubt your self. Like, wait a minute, where am I compared to these people? Is anyone saying that about me? I definitely kind of thought living with two girls would let me understand them a bit more, but it turns out I'm just finding out that there's more that I didn't even know I didn't understand.

It's all good though, the sweet part is that guys aren't supposed to understand girls anyway, so who cares?

Sick Release, Nice Grab

2008-09-01T18:49:00.000-07:00

Man, back at Willamette, sweetness. And it is too. It's all coming rushing back to me, all of it. Not really anything I can put my finger on though. Just what it's like to be here. Life on campus. The quad, the stream, the card swipes. And it's great. I walked into our dining hall today for lunch and Pam and I picked it right back up, she still remembered my name and my order. I had forgotten her name though haha, excellent. I don't know, it's not anything big, but it's just that kind of thing that you do everyday that's such a big part of your life. I mean it's not really a big part of your life, but it's a way you spend a lot of your time. Looking out the windows of Goudy, watching people sit by the Mill Stream.

Got a little Ultimate in, both today and yesterday. I thought it was going to be lame this year, with not being very good, but man, all of us are just as good as we always were. Kevin's a sweet captain, and the people who are still on the team are only going to get better. Once we're seniors, if we keep our conditioning up, we'll actually be pretty good. Kind of. Man, I can't wait to be good at Ultimate. I'm doing a lot better than I was at the end of last year though, my forehands are shaping up nicely. But it's just like, once you're laying out every point and not caring, that's when you're doing alright. When you see a hole in the defense and throw it there, and someone else grabs it right where you want it, that's when you're doing alright. When you actually look like an athlete of sorts, and all your physical activity is in the name of Ultimate, that's when you're doing alright. I love it though. It's a great excuse to swear.

Alas though, it is still college, and I do still need to read books and write papers and attend classes. And currently I'm scheduled for 2 hours a week at the mail center. Excellent. It can't come soon enough. But I know that once it does, It won't end soon enough.

Trace the Cord Back To the Wall

2008-08-30T01:50:00.000-07:00

Turns out it was never plugged in at all.

Man, I had quit running for like the past week and a half, just kind of because I ran out of steam doing it. But tonight, I laced up the sneakers again, and believe me, it was like coming home, it was amazing. I started off on my run, and I really thought it was going to go terribly, but I felt amazing. Kind of. In terms of all of the problems I was having when I quit, I had none of them, I had absolutely chest issues or just like average 'my heart's on fire' type of things going. There was about a half a mile in the middle there where I felt like there was a 30% chance I was going to throw up, but that's just because I had some chips like a half hour earlier, completely isolated. Also I was having a strange side ache thing going , which is strange because I haven't had side aches in a long time... Whatever, it's probably fine. It was really good though, tonight totally dispelled all of my fears that I had lost all of my progress. Those are the runs that you live for though. Back when I started this summer, I was stoked when I found out that I was a lot better than I had been when I had gone on a few runs the year before. Now that it's the end of summer, it's great that I can measure my progress in actual miles instead of theoretical feelings.

Maybe the thing I love most about running, is that you can really eat whatever you want. As long as there's enough protein. Back when I was running 12 miles a week I couldn't eat enough food to keep up with all the calories I was burning. That's actually the reason I stopped, there was no way for me to grow because I wasn't putting enough into my body. Pretty much I couldn't run because I had nothing to run on. But that's what I would recommend to anyone who wants to lose weight. It's really easy. I know it kind of sucks to run, you know, with the whole feeling like you're dying thing, but that's as hard as it gets. You've just got to want it. When you're running and you've been feeling like you want to quit for the past quarter mile, eventually you're going to ask yourself why the hell you're doing it. If you've got a good answer to that question, you'll keep going every time.

I Should Have Joined the Navy

2008-08-22T05:12:00.000-07:00

Lets start this blog off right. Turk and JD style.

That being said.... I've spent the last of my few sleepless nights looking at some PhD stuff. Reading some sweet blogs about people who are working on their PhD in history and stuff like that. There's actually a lot of stuff out there if you know where to look. But I'm just reading this one blog right now, and it's ridiculous, this woman is holding down a part time job, working on her dissertation, and teaching two sections of an intro History course. A college course. I had no idea grad students do that sort of thing. I mean, teaching a whole course? That's pretty intense. If you're doing that then you're pretty much already at the show, you know? You're already doing what you're working toward doing. It's crazy though, this woman does nothing but live her academics, for her, taking a break from it all is sitting and reading some obscure book from her field. Just thinking of all that stuff I get reminded of all the medical school business, that's what med school is. All you are is medicine, there isn't an hour of your day that's not devoted to it in some way. Complete immersion. But I guess that's just the level of mastery that a Doctorate symbolizes. The best. And everyone knows it too. I'm pretty well acquainted with most of my extended family members, and I would guess that only 2 of them have their doctorates. And if you know my mom, you know what kind of a family I have, they're all like that, snobbish intellectual types. But they don't really have any right to be because they're not that rich and they're mostly not that smart.

But anyway, I guess the biggest driving factor for getting my PhD. I think it's just self assurance. Man, once I got my doctorate, I would never have to question myself or my self worth again. I mean, I'm sure I will, just because that's who I am, but I would be in a pretty good position not to.

Anatomy of the Breakdown

2008-08-21T04:02:00.000-07:00

I'm throwing this out there right now, I've got friends who read my blog, friends who don't read my blog, and friends that don't know about my blog, but those guys can still be filed into those two categories too. If you don't read my blog, and you could, I like you less than someone who reads my blog. In most cases. To all of those who don't read my blog and claim to be my friend: what are you thinking? My blog is the best thing that ever happened to our friendship. How can our friendship grow if we don't learn more about each other? And reading my blog is definitely the easiest way to learn more about me. Maybe you don't want our friendship to grow hmm? Ok, that's fine, but that just means I don't like you as much as someone who wants our friendship to grow. But of course you don't care, and that's fine. Unless! I just bruised your ego. Then you definitely care. But then you care for the wrong reason. Whatever, all will right itself. The title of this blog may be, If you don't read my blog I hate you. At least that title will get people to read it.

I'm working on this theory these days, proof pending further investigation, that these days, weeks, months, semesters, are only going to start going by more quickly. You hear a lot of hare brained conjectures like: The weekends always go so quickly; or this Monday is soooo sloooow; or Summer always goes by fast for me. I don't think so, I think it's only racheting up from here. Think about the last few years, you're probably done already. Way too fast. It's like I only just recently broke up with Mariah. Three times. Then: think back to kindergarten. If you can remember that far. I can, I remember kindergarten as being my sole existence, that was it for me. Frankly, it blew my young mind when I learned about the whole progression through the grades idea. I didn't get it. As far as I had been concerned, that was it, it was just kindergarten, and everything else, well, who's thinking of everything else when you're in kindergarten? You're always hearing about these parents: They grow up so fast. And as a kid, you hear that and say: Are you joking me? I've been here forever!

If there were two things I learned from last night: Watching Andrew Schroth make a joke is like trying to watch a trainwreck make a swandive into a concrete swimming pool. AND. Currently, it seems like everyone I know is that the perfect age. Old enough to make dirty jokes, and young enough to laugh at them.

Five Iron Friendzy

2008-08-21T03:39:00.000-07:00

Friendships - all friendships - are always doing one of two things. They're all either growing or decaying. Friendships are pretty tricky things I've discovered. In all appearances, they're pretty random; that is to say, some of them really stick, and others just don't. I guess you could say some of the best friendships stick, and the lesser ones tend to fade away. That's a pretty weak explanation though because calling somethings best and lesser aren't really determining designations at all. What is the best friendship? Is it your best friend? Who is that? The person you've known the longest? The person you want to hang out with most often? Or just the person you have the most in common with? Or is it the person who you haven't seen in 5 years, but when you get back together it's better than ever. I thought about saying that it was just like it was, but that's not really the point. One thing is for sure though, before I progress, that friendships are one way streets, they're always different to each person. Ideally you would have both people in a friendship to the same degree, but it's never like that. People almost never feel the exact same way about each other, someone will consider you a friend when you will only consider them an acquaintance. Someone will put you as their #2 friend, while you're only putting them as your #5 (girlfriends aside). I may come back.

There's a lot of friend stuff going on, especially tonight, where it's all based on bringing things back. Tonight, a bunch of friends got together and said, lets have fun like we did 2 years ago. Let's all be hot and heavy like we were two years ago- well, you know. I know I'm a classic blower of this rule, but I should never like to be like the past. Things are changing, always, we're not the people we were two years ago, thank god. I don't think friendships should exist just because they used to be good. I guess that's what I'm really trying to say. It's hard you know, with college going on, no one ever sees the people they used to. And they miss them. That's what it is, pure and simple. EmilyKelsey missed everyone and planned an event that brought us all together. But I guess the point is, they didn't miss the people, they missed the good times. They couldn't have missed the people, because we're not the same, Emily doesn't know who I am these days, she doesn't miss my freewheeling college attitude and girl crazy demeanor, she misses calling me Andy and going to Cinnabon. I guess that's kind of the difference though, people you're friends with and people you have fun with. Emily aren't really friends. I don't think Emily or Kelsey and I have really ever had a conversation. At most they've had my name pop up in their head and say "What's Andrew Craig doing these days?" And check they're facebooks. But when we're in a group, we all have fun. Because this group has fun. I guess there's nothing wrong with wanting to have fun. Just don't force it.

Click a Button, Paint a Canvas. Plus Great.

2008-08-14T09:10:00.000-07:00

My last blog title gets a lot cooler once you kind of put a little sing into it. The melody doesn't matter, and you'll find the phrasing soon enough, it's pretty built in. Got it? The way I sing it is always with a really long "don't" waitstopno dooooon't go. If I ever wrote a song (after I learned how to write a song) that would be my leading chorus. Every once in a while that kind of thing happens you know? You just get a brain wave of some sweet line. But it's almost always just one or two lyrics. And then the melody that's just an amalgom of everything you've been listening to recently. That's how that stuff always happens to me, short bursts of something that seems like greatness. For example, I was running tonight, and I was thinking about how I would be a writer and I was just thinking of how the first thing I would need is something worth writing a book about. And I would almost have to write about my own life, but I could kind of throw some things in there for readability's sake. Just some exaggerations and explorations. So I said to myself that it would be like a fun house mirror image of the story of my own life. At the time that seemed really astute, of course I had definitely just been running for 3 miles. But to me, it sounded so good that I was almost sure that I had just lifted it off of some biography I've seen or something like that. And I still might have, I haven't looked it up at all. The point though, is that's the kind of thing you get, something that sounds so good that you're almost positive that someone has said it before. I don't know, I guess that's just how it goes sometimes.

I'm looking at pictures on Facebook you know, and I hate some of them. I hate all of those pictures that you can just tell were taken with a really nice/expensive camera. You can tell which pictures they are too, they just look so good. It seems like there are a lot of people who are "in to" photography at Willamette, which is cool, I mean, pictures are sweet. If I ever start taking really nice pictures, I would never call it photography though. Photography is just one of those words that's just a little too loaded towards the presumptive. It's like one of those hobbies that everyone who claims to do it thinks they're amazing at. It's easy to do too, I've been roped into it, you take one sweet picture and you think you're freaking Ansel Adams. And there it goes, right after that first picture, "Photography" right on the top of your Facebook interests. If I ever really get into that sort of thing, I would never use that word. And I definitely never refer to myself as a photographer. The only circumstance that I would consider someone worthy of referring to themselves as a photographer is if they go somewhere with the sole purpose of taking pictures. And I'm not talking about the skate park or an afternoon downtown. Sarajevo, the MidWest, certain sporting events, these things are where photographers are. Until you do something like that, you're just a "person who likes taking sweet pictures", and your hobby/Facebook interest is "taking sweet pictures".

Wait! Stop! No! Don't Go!

2008-08-13T18:59:00.000-07:00

I know I've talked about this before, but it's definitely a subject that can never be talked about enough. Two words, and both of them are dead lamb. Dead lambing is amazing just because it makes you feel good. Just like that release of honesty you know? If/When you ever dead lamb, you just tell a person exactly what you're thinking and feeling, usually in such a way that people don't generally hear. So then, this person understands you. At least in that aspect. I guess that doesn't really look or sound like a big deal when I type it out, it's just nice to be understood, I don't know, it makes you feel less alone I suppose. I highly recommend it. So much of the way people communicate is throttled, controlled and conserved. Baring your soul in a conversation is almost weird and definitely uncommon. But isn't that why we communicate? To interact, to connect, to grow? How can you connect if you're presenting anything other than who you truly are? It's not always a straight brick wall, sometimes it's just a winding route, full of twists and turns in way that leaves your true self hidden behind this maze. Why bother? Of course, on the flip side of all of this, there are also sometimes you want to be mysterious. Or at least, you would think so...? Haha.

In terms of myself, I'm going 100% honest these days. No more lies. Well, no more real lies. Fake lies are going to be at an all time high. Do you know the difference? You'll learn soon enough. Unless it's a harmful truth. If it's going to hurt someone and there's no beneficial reason to be honest, then lies are back on.

It's all coming around these days you guys, the integration. Songbird, this new program, a combination media player and internet browser. A The browser of Firefox, with the sweetness of Winamp, with the look and feel of iTunes. It's almost ready, it's still kind of hairy, but it's getting better every day. Man, once Digsby gets in on this gig, it will be ooc. Out of Control.

Keep on Smiling, The World's Watching.

2008-08-12T01:46:00.001-07:00

Speaking of being addicted to things, I'm hooked on this site, Girlsaskguys.com. If you're single, and ready to mingle, check it out. You don't even really have to be single, just having some questions about the opposite sex is enough. Haha, it's not a dating site or anything, it's basically just this huge forum of guys asking questions about girls and girls asking questions about guys. Pretty interesting, what do girls like and stuff like that. I probably just spent 20 minutes looking at questions about beards, the girls are claiming they like it by the way. In a way it's pretty inconclusive because the answers vary all over the place, but it's good to get some real world input once in awhile. Plus, since it's online, you look at all the questions you're not comfortable with other people knowing you want to know the answers to. You know the ones I'm talking about...

Going to the punk rock show this weekend, excellent. Rx Bandits, never dissapoint. I need to remember to carbo load though, I didn't have nearly enough electrolytes in my system at Thrice. Circa Survive more than made up for that though haha, burn. Not really actually, I was exhausted.

Watching these Olympics has really opened my eyes. First of all, wow. Second of all, America sucked up gymnastics this year. Third of all, these athletes are really freaking me out. You know, a lot of these guys have been doing nothing but training for their event for like the last 10 years. No high school, no outside friends, just weird stuff like that. You've got to wonder you know, if you don't win a gold medal at the Olympics, what was all of that for? Not too much, not enough. You would still be a world class athlete, but man, what happened. It's kind of like music I guess. A lot of people do that kind of thing, you know, pursue music performance as a career. But it's like, there's such a low stability in something like that, if you're not amazing, you're nobody. That kind of stuff just kind of sucks.

Before I run too long, I want to talk about Georgia. European Georgia. What started out as Russia defending an ally, has now escalated into an all out war in the Eastern European Bloc. It is anything but a bloc party. To all of us, it may just seem like some kind of abstract thing that's happening way on the otherside of the world that doesn't affect us, but man, it is going to get a lot worse. This is the beginning of the beginning for Russia, and the beginning of the end for whatever peace the world has going right now. It's Putin man, Vladamir is getting out of hand. We sat back when he installed a puppet president and now he knows he can do whatever he wants. I looked into the eyes of that man (on a Time magazine cover), and I felt pure fear. Get ready for some Russian Rambunction in the next year.

Atreyu?! Who am I, Benedict Arnold!?

2008-08-10T01:55:00.000-07:00

I actually may have a problem, there's a small possibility that I'm addicted to this writing thing. I definitely only got 4 hours of sleep last night and I still can't fall asleep tonight. I've just got to balance it out, open the flow. It's all like a dam right now. The water always keeps rushing in, it never stops, meanwhile the other side is drying out like a stale prune. Had a nice 'smore sesh last night. Minus the 'smore, so I guess it was really more just like a sesh. Still good though, it wasn't a total loss, I did have some graham crackers. The Q and A was the star of that night. Rightfully so I suppose. I mean, it was basically just like one big game of truth or dare, and everyone chose truth. A little middle school, but that's cool. It's kind of fun because you feel kind of dirty for talking about it, but it's not really a big deal because everyone's doing it and you know everyone's all thinking much dirtier things than you're about to say.

Still though, a great opportunity to get some things to think on, so I guess that's probably the root of my thinking problem. There was a small bit of talk about SAT scores the other night, including a vague mention of Abby almost getting a 2000. I think we all know here that I got a 1780 when I took the SATs, so naturally I launch into feeling a bit self concious about it. Now generally, to soothe any insecurities I feel about SATs I remind myself of how I bombed them, distracted the entire time by my grumbling stomach and the disruptive noises it was growling. Sometimes even that truth doesn't really quell the nagging though, but then I resort to the classic "standardized tests don't really tell you anything anyway". Everyone loves that one. But so then, I stray off onto this thought tangent through the differences between being smart and being intelligent. What does being smart even mean? Is it different from being intelligent? Which one's better? The knee jerk reaction is to say that being intelligent is better than being smart. But deep down that's mostly just because we all think that intelligence is better than smartness because the word intelligence is slightly more sophisticated. Hicks talk about being smart, the elite talk about being intelligent. That sort of thinking yeah? I just found a piece of grass on my keyboard. How does that even happen?

Eventually I came to the conclusion that everyone's definitions were different, and since they were adjectives it was all relative anyway. (Pop Quiz: True or False; All adjectives are relative... There may be a spot on my Heroes section for whoever sinks their teeth into this one.) The post conclusion I came to was able to be summed up in this little maxim: Being smart is being able to point to Malawi on a map; being intelligent is knowing that it doesn't matter if you can point to Malawi on a map. So go home, think about what those words mean. At the very least, you'll smarter just for even thinking about it.

Stop the Presses, Start the Panic

2008-08-06T21:04:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in Borders yesterday, reading the Newsweek I brought from home. I swear to god, I was sitting across from Kim Jong Il, tyrannical dictator of North Korea. I don't know how he got to America, why he was in Oregon, or why it looked like he was studying the driver's license manual, but it was 100% him. The worst part was that I didn't recognize him, I knew he was some Asian leader, but first I was positive it was Mao Zedong. That didn't make a lot of sense though, but I was sure he was Chinese, I could tell. But then later I thought on it some more and it turned out that he was Kim Jong Il. So I guess he wasn't Chinese after all. But so we're sitting in these chairs right, with a few other people, it's a chair circle. And I know I need to take a picture of this guy, because I know no one would believe me. Thank god for camera phones. The problem was though, it's hard to discretely take a picture of someone, you have to line up the lens perfectly. Plus the fact that my phone makes this irritating sound when it takes a picture that you can't turn off. And, you know, I didn't want anyone to think I was a wierdo, taking pictures of people reading. I don't really know why I was so worried about it now that I think about it, I'm sure they all recognized him and were dying to take a picture too. So this is the best picture I managed to get:

So then I knew that this was a bad picture, so I decided to try and score a video, because it wouldn't make that lame sound. But! It turns out my video can't zoom like my camera can. Here it is though.

Now lets compare these to a known picture of Kim Jong Il shall we?

I think this evidence speaks for itself.

Sitting on a Park Bench That's Older Than My Country.

2008-08-05T02:44:00.001-07:00

Sometimes you just get knocked down by a line in a song. Absinthe Party, man, going to France actually sitting on a park bench and acknowledging that it's older than your country. That would just be unreal. Eventually, probably pretty soon, I'm going to be going abroad, right now I've been looking at Sweden. Sweeeeden. Those guys are doing something right over there, they've got something like the longest life span and the best quality of living in the world. Definitely Europe though for sure. I don't really care about other continents. South America? No thanks. Asia? Maybe when I'm older. Australia? Maybe when I'm retired. Africa? Maybe when I'm impoverished. Europe though, that's some place I can wrap my head around. Maybe not Sweden though. I would love a place with a bit more history to it you know? I mean, Sweden's been around as long as the rest of them, but it's been sitting on the bench, watching the world go by. If Sweden were a Risk strategy, they would be just hanging out, putting their 3 guys on and passing the dice. Sure they're growing and getting pretty reputable, but they're no where near the aggressive land war in Africa. Which strategy would you rather be a part of?

I was reading an article in the Newsweek today about trains. It's really a pity that we're not into the train scene pretty much at all. I read that in the 35 years that Amtrak has been around, it hasn't once posted a profit. Ouch. Trains are pretty sweet too. They're a pretty efficient way of mass transit, more efficient than cars anyway, and there's an element of cool. I for one have never been on a train before. I don't really know what the problem is with trains, there are tracks. Troutdale train station anyone? I would love to take a train back and forth to Willamette. The thing is so damn costly though, it costs like 15 bucks one way. Come on. It doesn't cost that much to move me. Plus, half the time you buy a train ticket, they actually put you on a bus. What's the point in that? They go to the same place. Europe is doing it right right now, they've got trains down to a science. Hyper efficient track systems, reasonable fares, adequate accessibility. I wish I knew a way I could bring train travel to the states. I really do. I guess what I would have to do is actually take it and write about it, spread the word. The reason prices are so high is because they need to be high to sustain themselves. I mean, Amtrak is federally subsidized, but that only goes so far, and pretty much no one rides them, so I guess tickets have to cost a lot. Still though, high prices is not the way to attract riders. All aboard?

But When we Wake, It's All Been Erased.

2008-08-05T02:14:00.001-07:00

I'm going to go out on a very sturdy limb here and say that any guy who knows how to play the guitar and has liked a girl has written a love song. Easily actually. I'm 100% sure on that one. And I'm also 100% sure that any guy who doesn't know how to play guitar and has liked a girl has wished he could play, just to play that song. Not necessarily play it to her, but just to play it. It's important to note that you don't have to be in love to write a love song. Mostly because there are no like songs.

I had a dream last night that Chris, Andrew Schroth, me and everyone I know were sitting in this big auditorium. It was one of those all school assemblies in the auditorium. The angle this time was something about an RHS band reunion performance. Andrew Schroth was playing for a bit, but then he just came and sat with us. I remember that we were being really disruptive. Near the end of the assembly, I asked Andrew Schroth if he knew the guitar part to Only in Dreams. He said he did. I looked at Chris and asked if he wanted to play some Only in Dreams after the assembly up on stage, just the three of us; him on drums, Scrotty on guitar, and me on bass, Only in Dreams is one of the few bass parts I know, and still know actually. So Chris says yes of course and we go up right after it's all over, plug in, and bust it open. Before we got too far into the song I woke up, but I remember that Andrew Schroth was playing it perfectly. We all were.

The best strategy I have for when I run is just to think about stuff that takes my mind off the pain. I listen to music, but that doesn't really distract me enough. One of the questions I always come back to is Why am I doing this. It's really important to know things like that. If I didn't have a good reason for running I would just stop, because you know there's a good reason for stopping. Then you just start thinking about what motivates you. I may have talked about this before. But really, it all comes down to wanting to. More specifically wanting to for yourself. Really everything you do comes down to doing something for yourself. Even things that aren't obviously done in your self interests are still done to help you. Whether it's something you do to make yourself feel good, or something you do so you won't feel guilty. You do something to alleviate your own wants. If you didn't want to do something you wouldn't do it.

I'm in love with Absinthe Party at the Fly Honey Warehouse. I wish gifts could be exchanged that mean this much to people. The other line was the opening guitar part to Cath... I guess my Heroes section remains vacant. Mourning came early.

Another Time and You'll Be Mine

2008-08-02T05:04:00.000-07:00

Another victory in the win column for Risk tonight. Six hours of a slow win. It was totally worth it though, now I'm two for three in the wins. Plus I'm really inexperienced. When it comes to Risk, at least the way we play it, probably, at least half the game is all talking your way out of things and making alliances, that's the really great part about it, it takes the entire game aspect of it, and deepens it and makes it completely unique to every game. Risk is one of the rare games where, like Chris said, if you lose, it's entirely your fault. It's like Chess that way I suppose.

I went down to Salem the other day to visit some friends, that was pretty sweet. It really got me thinking about going back to college. Ugh, going back to college, that phrase kills me. But college is going to be great next year, I'm rocking the straight As, I won't say 4.0 just in case some minuses get thrown in there. The great thing about college is, when you're there, that's all you care about, you don't care about money, you don't care about your home, you just care about school and girls. That's pretty much exactly what I want my life to boil down to right now. That's all I really care about, School, and Girls. And Risk. Mm, and Ultimate, that too. Actually I had this great idea to join the Golf team, it was a really good idea, until I remembered that I was already on the Ultimate team. I feel like two sports is a lot. One of them is golf though. WUGolf, excellent. Plus I could tell everyone I was a varsity college athlete.

Golf is a sport I've had a fascination with for a while, it's one of the few sports where it doesn't really matter if you're good or not. I mean, it matters if you want to win the match or whatever. But outside of that, no one really cares. Plus wearing a golfing glove is pretty cool. We'll see how I feel about WUGolf in the Spring.

Suck on it Vampire Weekend

2008-07-31T00:05:00.000-07:00

Did you guys catch that? The little play on words in my post title? If that wasn't enough laughs for you, I'll start you off with a little photo.

When I first heard about this, I probably giggled for about 5 minutes.

Hardcorvallis? What more can be said, it may have been even more hardcore than it's name. I'll try and paint you a mental picture; it was like, well, now that I think about it, it was really just a day of driving around and listening to sweet music at OSU. It was pretty sweet though. Especially when I saw that gigantic American flag outside of... Newberg. Man, true story, this thing was probably four Cadillac Escalades by two Cadillac Escalades, it definitely spanned the entire width of the road. The biggest american flag I've ever seen.

The day started with a trip to Linfield, rock on, never been before, I hope it liked me. From Linfield on, I wore a shirt that I'm pretty sure once belonged to a skinny gay cowboy. It fit really well though. The shirt, not the former owner. Probably the low point of the day though was when we were at Safeway, Scrotty needs to pay cash for a money order, but he doesn't have any cash, so we walk around looking for things to buy, first off, he opts out of buying some adult diapers for the drive back. What?! Then, after he decides to buy some Coke in glass bottles, the guy forgets to buy a scratch it! C'mon! You always buy scratch its when you're at the grocery store, they're so cheap, the state is pretty much paying you to play. Besides that you win almost everytime, worst case scenario, usually, they pay for themselves. I've spent 19 and 3/4 years on this planet, and the only sure things I've seen are scratch its and Google stock. I hope he doesn't pass up the other one.

The Time Has Come, Mount Your High Horse

2008-07-30T00:35:00.001-07:00

Ugh, my dreams have been crushed. No more doubledouble majorminor. The plan was a hot double maj in History and Philosophy while scoring a double minah in Classics and Economics. It would have been amazing, but unfortunately, due to the scourge that is required classes, I won't have enough time. Oh well though, I mean, I'm sure I'll have enough school to suffice me anyway. Grad school is good for that sort of thing.

Who isn't undecided on Imogen Heap? Several times in one song I go back and forth on whether or not I like it. I mean, she's got her good ones like Hide and Seek, and Let Go with Frou Frou, but it's the non hits that make the artist. If Death Cab didn't have songs like Bixby Canyon Bridge, Brothers on a Hotel Bed and Transatlanticism, they wouldn't be amazing. Imogen Heap definitely has her songs though. I need an album. I would go with a random sampling, but my Limewire's on the fritz. Rilo Kiley, everyone raves about them, what's their story? Hmm, apparently, the girl from Rilo Kiley did some of the vocals for The Postal Service... So far so good.

I'm reading Rousseau these days. Rousseau is this 18th century Swiss political theorist. And he's got me thinking about political theory again. One of the things a lot of these old guys have in common is that they all like monarchy, but recognize it for it's single flaw. They're all right, monarchy really is the system that allows for the strongest government, and thus, the strongest nation. In a monarchy, all of the power is centralized into a single person, most of it anyway. With all of the power in one person, the state can be steered quickly, and agilely. There would be none of this stand still in government, red tape, delay, trying to make things happen, approvals, majorities, 2/3, in session, out of session, beltways. There wouldn't be any pandering for a re election campaign, the monarch would just do what he or she thought was best. Unfortunately, the only problem with monarchy is succession. Monarchy can run the gambit from amazingly liberating to awfully oppressive in one generation. It's all fun and games when you have a good king, but when his son takes over, the people are calling for uprising. I feel like we really should be able to find a way to make this monarchy thing work. I feel pretty confident in saying that in a nation of this size, there's at least one person per generation who would make a good king. It would be really hard to find that person, but it would be worth it to the infinite degree.

I'll let you guys think on it.

Oh. Well I Guess That's Fine Then. That Guy Rocks.

2008-07-29T23:31:00.000-07:00

We bought some wine and some paper cups, near your daughter's school when we picked her up.
- Definitely the best line of Narrow Stairs. That and...
Ch-k-ch dadle ow, dow now... If you know where that goes, I'll put you in my Heroes section on Myspace.

I made a phone call to Talbot today, I can't tell you what it was about, but it was important. I don't really like talking on the phone, I try to do it as little as possible, so what I do is I try and stockpile all the phone calls I know I need to make and just make them all one right after another to get them all over with. This phone call though, I've been stressing out about it for about three weeks, but finally, the reason I made it, I just didn't want to think about it anymore. It was burning my brain, I just didn't want to deal with this issue. It's probably not resolved though, but at least it's moving.

I watched a lecture by this guy Randy Pausch last night. Randy Pausch is a guy who died just recently, like last Friday, but he was a Computer Science professor at Carnegie Mellon, and he gave a couple of amazing lectures. This one I saw was on Time Management and it completely blew my mind. The lecture is like an hour long, so you probably won't watch it, but I thought it was pretty impressive. A lot of the stuff he talks about doesn't really apply to me, like he spends a lot of time on how to deal with bosses and how to delegate and things like that, but he's got a certain level of charisma that just kind of makes him fun to listen to. It's like when I listen to Car Talk every weekend. Car Talk is an public radio show about car repair, but I listen to it every week even though I don't really car about fixing my car that much. The guys are just kind of fun to listen to. I'll link to this Time Management lecture, so feel free to watch it until you get bored. If you're into that kind of thing though, you really want to spend some time on www.ted.com. Ted.com is a website that hosts a bunch of these little talks, they're called Ted Talks, and they're just a bunch of lectures and speeches by these really smart people who are into thinking about ways to change the world. Obviously there are a lot of them about being environmentally conscious, but there's also one on there right now whose title is "What Makes Us Happy", so it's just a bunch of videos by people wanting to make a difference. It's a great site to visit if you want to stimulate your mind.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5784740380335567758

Haha, It's a Jack Johnson lyric, so Don't worry about it.

2008-07-28T02:10:00.000-07:00

Just got out of an amazing Risk game, that's probably the biggest reason I couldn't sleep, there was no way to stop thinking Risk, haha, that was exactly my problem with Ultimate. I do love Risk though, and not even just because it's fun, it's a really good mental exercise. It definitely requires an amount of mental toughness to be able to work all the angles. The biggest one is probably deciding that you have a losing strategy and you need to change. Definitely the hardest times in Risk.

I applied to Coffee People today, thought you might like to know. I had to email them my resume, and I was feeling really assertive so I threw in a nice sentence of how much I loved their coffee and how it was a tragedy that they were going down in flames. I've definitely never even been inside a Coffee People and up until I saw this job posting I thought they were already out of business.

I was reading Newsweek the other day, and I read that 76% of France's electricity comes from nuclear power. 76%. The US is sitting pretty at 20%, 40% comes from Coal. Seriously, coal. I definitely didn't even know that anyone even used coal anymore. Unless they were going to grill some steaks. Everyone's always raving about greenhouse gases from cars and transportation, but electricity is almost as big of a contributor. Transportation only accounts for 30% of all of the greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. I don't know, it pretty crazy I suppose, fun fact for the day.

Maybe I'll apply to ChaCha

But..... How would your feet be Infested....?

2008-07-25T01:59:00.000-07:00

Of all the human body's aspects, I think that the entire concept of sleep is the one I understand the least. I think it's a big mystery to everyone. Have you ever thought about what it's like to drift off to sleep? Like you're laying in bed, and you think about what it feels like to actually fall asleep. Is it a long process? Does it happen in an instant? One time, I was staying at my grandparent's house, and I thought I mastered it, I started taking a bunch of deep breaths, and I did get really tired and eventually fell asleep. But I've tried it again a bunch of time since then and it's not working for me at all. I guess sleep is way more of a psychological process than that, like you can't trick yourself into falling asleep, because your brain knows you know, sleep knows you're trying to trick it. I heard that Bill Gates had this thing going where he was an instantaneous sleeper; like he trained his body to fall asleep at once. I think that's pretty impressive, just when I think of how much time I spend trying to get to sleep, it's nuts to think that all of that time could be spent productively. I'm rocking this system these days where I'm only sleeping from around 4am-1pm, no matter what. It's such a process so ingrained in your mind, like my body only wants to wake up at around 1pm. I could probably go to sleep at like 12, and still not wake up until 1. By the same token, I can go to sleep at 8am (in an attempt to stay up all night and break the habit), and wake up at 1 regardless of the fewer hours of sleep.

I just had this memory back from last semester, during a really tense study time, when I was looking back at the high school times, when my biggest worry was my sleeping habits. Perspective.

For all of you readers who don't know, there's a blogging revolution coming, we're making some big changes to the way things are done. It's going to be for the better though, I hope.

Dude, it's a little pebble of Tar, like off the Road.

2008-07-23T01:50:00.001-07:00

As gratifying as it sounds, sitting at home reading all day "becoming smart" kind of can have its downsides. On the plus side, you get to sleep for 12 hours every day because you have nothing to wake up for, but on the minus side, once you've slept for 12 hours, your body makes you get out of bed even though you don't really want to. All you've woken up for is a day of watching, watching things happen. Besides all that, your teeth hurt.

Back on Monday, I was looking at myself in the mirror and decided it was a good time to put my retainer back in. A few months ago, I spotted a gap growing in my teeth and became a little bit frightened. No one wants an ugly smile. I used to be really good at putting my retainer in every night, but around the new year, I decided that my teeth were pretty much set, and the retainer wasn't needed. Not a good call on my part. So on Monday, I picked my retainer out of its bacteria ridden case, jammed it into my mouth, and have been suffering ever since. I can't eat food hardly at all. And since I can barely eat, I can't really work out at all. I should be fine though, I did work out 2 summers ago. Maybe 3...

The Dark Knight was amazing, I just saw it today, somebody talk with me about it. Well done.

I just picked up running again, I seem to have hit some kind of a brick wall, I can't kick this stomach pain. It's right on the stomach, I think, I don't really know what's going on down there. like, in between my belly button and my solar plexus. I think it may have something to do with not eating enough food. It's kind of possible that running 3 miles burns through exactly as many calories as I consume. Just keep going though, running is all psychological, being physically fit helps, but unless you're about to die, it doesn't matter. Just keep telling yourself you're unstoppable, that way you can't stop.

What Does That Even Mean? What's a Tar Ball?

2008-07-23T01:01:00.001-07:00

Aww, I just blew a perfect opportunity to call upon my 'sovereign hand' phrase in that last blog... Ugh.

I love a good walk to percolate some thoughts for a good blog. The walk can't be too long though, it's like you get those thoughts percolating, and if you walk for too long they over percolate and you forget about them all over again.

I walk in my Crocs always, the thing I love about Crocs, even though rocks come in the back all the time, they can just go out through the front, it's like a freaking rock highway.

I've got whole new plans for this summer you guys, I just cooked them up on this walk. Actually, both of them involve plans to do things for an entire day that shouldn't actually take that long. The first one is walking downtown, like, to downtown, from my house. I actually had this idea last summer and then forgot about it. One day, probably at like 8am, just walk, all freaking day. That's the main objective, the only reason I want to go downtown is to actually give me something to walk towards, otherwise I'd just be walking around the same area all day. You guys should join in, it will be a big walk a thon. Man, I can't wait for that one. My next idea though, is going to be really amazing.

A few of you might know that bench at the entrance to sunrise park. I'm going to stand on that for a whole day. And film it all day. Probably around 17 hours, sunrise to sunset. Then, at the end, I'm going to scrunch it into fast forward time, and play a song behind it. It will be the greatest music video ever. My back in the foreground and Mt. Hood in the background. This is the one I'm really going to need your guys' help on. There will be uploading duties, getting me food duties, and then just kind of hanging out duties. Also I need a video camera. This is going to be so sweet, probably my sweetest life's work to date, maybe ever. The best part though, alongside this main filming, we can create a 'making of' video, chronicling how we did it. Basically just a bunch of stupid videos of us hanging out and making jokes. I have a feeling Ivan's in, but he's the only one I'm sure see's the brilliance of this idea. I let it percolate with you guys for a while.

Her Feet are Infested With Tar Balls

2008-07-23T00:40:00.000-07:00

Do you guys ever feel like Europe is much cooler than the United States? I'm going to have to do a Euro Trip pretty soon, whether it's study abroad or whatever. The thing that really blows my mind: Europe and the US are about the same size. You can drive from Berlin to Zurich in 7 hours. Seriously guys. I'm getting a huge parallel with the high school/college dynamic. The United States' high school is to Europe's college. Just like, Europe doesn't have to deal with all that junk that the US is dealing with, all of it is just a bore to Europe. When you're in the US, you think you're at the peak of the world, but Europe just shows you that the real show is outside the country. Any place where I can travel 5 countries in 24 hours is fine by me. I've got a sweet mental image of me just sitting on my European veranda reading an American newspaper and just laughing at it all.

The internet is the worst example. It's nearly impossible to even fathom web pages that aren't either American or in English. It's just completely unreal! But in reality, North America is third in internet usage, behind Asia and Europe. There's a whole other internet out there! There are a few even.

ICQ is the most downloaded program ever. In America, ICQ is a joke, all that stuff is Europe and Asia. I guess that's the price of being American, everyone knows it, the limited worldview. No one really cares because as long as you don't leave the country it's not a big deal at all, and who's leaving the country? Like everyone's reading this, and they know it, but no one really cares that America is easily the most egotistical, self absorbed country in the world. Seriously, none of you people care. You don't even deny it. You know it's true and you don't care. You might even be giggling at this point. As much as I love a good blog giggle -Blogiggle-, it only goes to show how egotistical America really is. Imagine though, if you saw Spain over there, being all, you know, egocentric. If Spain behaved like we do, we would probably kick their ass. Maybe not militarily, but nationally, No one would be liking Spain right now. Their athletes would be boo'd en masse at the Olympics, they would just be smiling their smiles, waving to the disgruntled crowd. If Spain was a monarchy, and they tried to swoop into Iraq and install a monarchy. We would flip out. There's only room enough for one top dog, over inflated nation on this planet. Go to Mars if you know what's good for you.

Attempt

2008-07-19T21:37:00.000-07:00

The problem with art, even art of the most purity, the most representation, the most identification is that it can only truly sum up a persons feelings and precise emotions in a certain time, at a certain point in their mental progression. The thing is though, some people can do that really well. If you were an artist who was going through an emotional/psychological struggle of the utmost complexity and depth, there's a small chance that you could create something (sculpture/painting/drawing) that explained that state really well. Some thing about this piece of art just simply captured your inner turmoil perfectly. To me, that's great art. But even that is only relevant to you as long as you're going through that circumstance. At any other time, or to any other person, that artwork only can rekindle or try to recreate that emotional state you were in at the time. And then maybe, if you're the luckiest artist in the world, you find someone who was going through something that also is perfectly represented in this piece of art. But I doubt that has ever happened.

I suppose the tragedy here is that art is merely the 3 dimensional creation of a 4 dimensional being. Assuming that the fourth dimension is time. Over time, or as time advances, humans change in a way that isn't merely physical. It's mental and emotional. Everyone changes as they grow, in every way that it is to be a human. That is to say, they change in every aspect that makes humanity. In that way, human beings are four dimensional. The art they create, is not four dimensional, it lacks the capability to change along with the world around it. What would be truly beautiful, is a piece that grew and changed on it's own, a piece endowed with the capability of, not even merely reacting to it's changing environment, but undergoing changes of it's own. You may be now thinking of the only 4 dimensional creation humans can produce, children. In a way I suppose they are works of art in that they are created and groomed in the image and manner of their artist.

That's really not where I expected this to go though. Whoa.

It kind of depends on what spurs this desire to create. Why is there a need to express? I feel like it's more than a desire to produce something beautiful. Artists of all kinds feel instinctual needs to do more than just bottle up their minds. It's the need to do something, anything to move this emotional state. Maybe it's the need to understand. To comprehend in someway. You may not be able to describe yourself to a friend or a shrink, but you can understand it in another way; a way that lets you voice it through paintings and colors, shapes, and visualizations. When words fail, art speaks. That only allows for one kind of art though. There is amazing art that's not born of struggle, but is simply a communication of something beautiful. I think this art is also a way of resolving the conflict between communication and language. It must be I suppose.

A Summation of the Following Normalcy

2008-07-19T04:35:00.000-07:00

If you're like me, you can only read so much before you have to stop and get your mind doing something else. The best cure is always a good blog. I'm blazing through Catch 22 these days. I started reading it a long time ago, back when Ivan, Arianna and I decided to start a bit of a book club. The club kind of disbanded though when we found out that the first book we chose, Catch 22, wasn't very good. A lot of people love it, but it's not really doing it for me. That was a year ago. I started it up yesterday again, I should finish it by the end of the week. In my opinion the only two good things that came out of this book is the name Yossarian (Yossarianna?) and the phrase 'sovereign hand'. Feel free to expect that phrase to pop in a rant or two that I write at some point.

I know you may not want to see me, on your way down, from the clouds.
Would you hear me if I told you, that my heart is, with you now?

She's only happy in the sun.

I went on to type out the lyrics to that entire song as I heard them. I deleted them though in favor of blog content. Such as it is. I applied to Dairy Queen yesterday. Haha, just saying it kind of makes me laugh. I don't really know what would be funnier, me getting the job or not getting it. It would be pretty cool if I got hired though. It's not really about the money. Though I do have luxuries I would like to afford. It just sounds kind of cool right now to start doing something new. You know, tackling challenges, humiliate myself a bit. And get paid to do it. What could be better. If I wasn't so self concious about my work experience I would be dreaming up a sweet way to be fired. Like eating Blizzards while taking people's orders, or just not taking it very seriously anyway, which I probably won't anyway. I don't know, I just feel like I want to DQ something different with my life. Haha. Clearly this summer is driving me insane.

Who is Doug Glass?
He's the type of guy who stays up all night just to see if it really is darkest before the dawn.

A Day of Dreaming and a Night of Living

2008-07-16T02:25:00.001-07:00

I guess if you're not my mom you may not get these, but I think these Zits comics are starting to hit a lot closer to home.

Let Me Be Your Tourniquet Man

2008-07-16T01:14:00.000-07:00

Holy cow, I just spelled tourniquet correctly on the first try. Well, I mean I did put a g instead of a q, but that was a typo that didn't count, I knew it was a q, I just typed a g on accident. I suppose I wasn't the District Spelling Champion in the 8th grade for nothing. True story. Let me tell you how my blogging style works. What I'll do, often, is feel like I need to blog. Write down what I feel like writing. Decide it's not long enough, keep writing, decide this blog is getting too long and cut it off. Then I'll spend some time thinking of blog titles. My last one I think it pretty sweet. So then, once I'm thinking of titles, I'll think of one, and then another one right after it, so I pretty much need to start a new post right there so I don't forget the title, that happens all the time.

One of my mom's friends from Texas was over at the house today. He travels a lot for his job so he's in Portland occasionally (I definitely just butchered occasionally) and when he's in town he stops by for dinner. Anyway, we were talking about college and stuff, you know "How was your freshman year?" and when he was asking that question he stopped himself and threw in a "You did get a enough credits to complete your freshman year right?" And then, you know the conversation went on a bit. But internally, I was kind of laughing at this question, I mean, of course completed my freshman year you know. So, it may be the case that among my mom's friends I'm developing this reputation of being a slacker idiot. As I was thinking about it, something my mom said a couple years ago started stirring me up a bit, she said that everyone at her work was kind of amazed that I actually got a job. This was when I worked at Weston. So we can add spoiled to this list of attributes.

However, in my defense, I don't have a job right now because I don't need one. I don't need something to do, I've got mountains of books that prove that, and I don't need the money. Admittedly I don't go to Sushiville as often as I'd like, but I don't think that's any great hardship. I would probably just save all the money anyway. As far as paying for school goes, I'm going to have $20,000 in student loans that I won't even look at for three more years, I don't think that 700 bucks this summer is really going to put a dent in it. And I would never do something as stupid as not pass a class. I don't get As because I don't need to. Well, didn't need to. Now that I have a career path in mind I have to make that happen so I'll need some academic standing. I think the deal with these adults who think I'm an idiot is kind of my fault though. Due to the way I was raised, when these people are over, I rarely talk to them. And when they do ask me questions, I'm an extremely poor conversationalist. That's kind of true just in general though. Whatever though, I guess all I can do is prove them wrong. It does kind of bother me though, and the next one of these people who bothers me about it is going to get some attitude. That is going to be a great day.

I'll Think of You Until You Think of Me

2008-07-16T00:48:00.000-07:00

I've got this shoulder hair right now, it's probably a good 2 inches long. Just perched on the edge of my shoulder. The sweet part is, when I have my shirt off I can talk to it, you know, like a parrot. Sometimes we all need a little lead in to start our blogs off. You know you need to blog, you sit down in front of blogger, but you just don't know where to start. That's when these things come in handy. Plus it's nice to let you all know what's going on over here. I finally finished my Tab crown molding around my room. I mean, I finished it a long time ago, but some of the cans in one corner constantly fall down. So now I just got so fed up with it I decided to super glue them in place. Sure when I take it down it will probably take some paint off, but it's worth it. But now I've got about 20 extra empty cans on my desk that I don't really know what to do with. Part of me says it's time to close that part of my life, but the other part says that I'm sure I can do some sweet things with them. We'll see what I think about.

I just got done watching an episode of Scrubs. Scrubs may be one of the greatest shows ever. It was just so well done. Even from the start. If Seinfeld has a flaw, it's that it took them a while to really get into the groove of making a good episode. The first and second seasons were kind of weak. With Scrubs I think it's almost the complete opposite. I'm watching these episodes from the first season, back in like 2001, and they were good from the start, if there weren't any dated pop culture references in them I would assume they were new. The thing Scrubs did, I don't really know why, they took a lot of the edge off of the show as it progressed, the earlier episodes were much heavier than ones today. Personally I like it a lot, many of the things JD is doing now are not things his character would have been doing in seasons 1 or 2. He's just a lot more silly and whimsical. And Zach Braff does it amazingly, but I just don't really think that's the way to get laughs out of this show. Not to mention his hair. His hair has definitely fallen off since the show began. Actually, the same is true of Ryan in The OC.... It's not even just character changes though, in terms of plot lines, the earlier seasons are dealing with much heavier issues. I don't know though, maybe I'm just bitter because JD and Eliot never got back together.

You're Nothing! Your Worthless Except for These Verses!

2008-07-14T02:32:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about my summer goals, you know, Big Haircut, and then I started thinking about how bad it is that I don't have a place to go to get a good haircut. In my entire life, I've had maybe one good haircut. I've just never found the right place you know. I think it's really important to have a nice strong relationship with your hair person, it's definitely the most faith you put in a person who does something to your appearance. You know, for the most part, the way you look is up to you. But with a haircut, it's a whole different story, this is one big aspect of the way you look that you have no control over. So of course you need to have a good relationship with this person, it's all based on trust. Trust that they're not going to butcher you. That's probably where a lot of the talking comes in. Hair dressers are notorious for talking to you while they're cutting your hair. I guess that's reasonable you know, they don't really have anything else to do. But whenever I go in there, I just can't do it. I can't ever get a good conversation in with this hair person. And I think the problem is rooted in a lack of trust. Since I'm not 100% confident that this person will take care of me, there's no way I can relax enough to have a free conversation. And it's not like I can't talk to them because we don't have anything in common either, I've heard some of the conversations that go on in that place, these people are willing to talk about anything. But anyway, I think that has to be the mark of a good hair place. A place where you can go, have no trepidation and just have a pleasant conversation with the person doing your hair.

I was driving to Safeway this evening, I saw a guy, stopped at a light, driving this big thing, looked like a Chevy Suburban, no driver side door. This guy was just hanging out, I could see his entire body driving the car. This experience definitely rekindled my flame for taking the doors off of my car. Truly, it seems like such a good idea. I don't know if this guy took his door off on purpose or he got into some kind of accident that detated his capa or anything, but it got me thinking none the less. Nonetheless. None-the-less. I asked my mom if she thought it was a great idea or the greatest idea, and according to her, it's not street legal. I told her that I see Jeeps doing it all the time, but she says that's because Jeeps have roll cages. If this is true, it's going to suck. Now, I would lose my front speakers, which is really too bad, because the things I would need most if I took my doors off would be speakers, but I feel like I could live with out them. At least until I decided I couldn't and put the doors back on. Oh well. Back to the drawing board.

Soundscapes and Explosions in the Sky

2008-07-12T10:47:00.000-07:00

Finished 1984 yesterday, not too bad, pretty interesting I suppose. For those who don't know, 1984 is the story of a world consumed by radical socialism to the point of everyone's actions, conversations and even thoughts being monitored. In this world, we follow the path of one Winston Smith who, despite living in a society where everyone is brainwashed into loving the government, is a hardcore dissenter and the book really just follows his journey on a crusade to find others like him so he knows he's not crazy. It's a pretty intense book in some parts, focusing on the oppression of this government. I guess the idea is complete control over your everyday lives, totalitarianism itself. It's also pretty philosophical in a lot of parts too, there's this great running theme that nothing exists outside of your mind and whatever you believe is the truth because nothing else matters anyway.

I was looking at diplomats on Wikipedia, and it turns out that you have to take this giant test, it's called the Foreign Service Written Examination, and the government will like, place you into a position based on how you do on that test. But then I was reading about some of the hidden dangers of this line of work. Like, if you're in some kind of hostile country, you'll definitely be the first person kidnapped. It's like that big kidnapping in Iran back in the 70s, all of those guys were diplomats kidnapped by Iranian revolutionaries and held for over 400 days. Pretty intense stuff. I mean, there's just so much international intrigue. That's alright though, I feel like dying in service to your country is probably one of the best ways to go. But there's a big issue around family and stuff. Apparently you really have to go wherever they tell you, and you move around every 3 or so years. That could definitely be pretty rough on the wife and kids. It also doesn't pay very much. But that's not that big of a deal because if I really feel like it, I can just start selling national secrets to terrorists. Those guys make bank.

So far my summer to do list is going really poorly. Haven't gotten a haircut yet. Still working on my suntan, but our kitchen is still being worked on. I did fall asleep in the hammock today though, so that was good. But regrettably I forgot to take my shirt off, so it can only be counted as a partial victory. Oh well though, at the end of the day, you've just got to keep your spirits up. At least I don't have a job.

I Don't Know Much, But I Know I Love You

2008-07-10T01:37:00.000-07:00

Ever since I came back from college, it's been like one non stop barrage of chores from my mom. Just asking me to do all this stuff around the house. I guess she thinks that because I don't have a job she can just make me do all these little home improvement tasks. Normally I wouldn't really mind, well, I would, but I wouldn't have any reason to, but I feel like ever since I got back I feel almost no tie to this house anymore. Like, deep down, I know this is still my home and where I live and stuff. But since I don't live here most of the year, I just feel such a lack of a connection to it. Which doesn't really make any sense really, after my mom I am the real owner of this house, and I'm sure she'll never move so I'll probably get it when she dies, so really, any thing I do for this house is really something I'm doing for me. Maybe that's the way I should start thinking about these things

Borders screwed me on this second interview. They definitely stood me up on a call back on Monday. Today's Thursday. No call. I'm sure that last week when I had my first interview the woman planned on giving me a second one, otherwise it would be a ridiculous lie to tell. Probably sometime between then and now they guessed my dirty little secret and decided they didn't want someone who was leaving in September. Too bad, but I'm not too worried about it. As I stated earlier, I don't need a job to feel like I'm doing something worthwhile. In spite my mom's frequent sighs of disappointment every day when she asks me if I've gotten a job, I still don't feel the need. She's got bigger problems than me sitting at home all day anyway. If I was really worried about it I could pull a Lauren Wagner and start selling knives. I'm dedicating my post title to her by the way. I never publicly showed it, but I've been harboring a secret love for her ever since sophomore year. Why else would you think Chris and Lauren would break up? I couldn't have that relationship lasting. Not on my watch.

I've got big plans for this summer though you know. Once our contractor get's his giant van out of the driveway, I plan to park my car there, sit on the hood and suntan for about an hour and a half each day. Actually, In all seriousness, I'm working on formulating a bit of a construction project that will take up a good portion of my considerable ingenuity. Also this summer, I plan to get a haircut. Here's a riddle for you: what's the difference between getting a hair cut and getting a haircut? About 10 million.

Keep them Seperated... But still Keep them.

2008-07-09T00:51:00.000-07:00

One of these days, I'm going to take the titles of all of my blog postings and put them together into one big book of poetry. My last five post titles have all been original compositions. Usually they don't have anything to do with the post itself, just something I think sounds kind of cool.

Last night I went on a hardcore walking odyssey. I really had nothing to do at like 12:30 last night, so I decided to just go walk it out. It's really a throwback to last year. I would do that like 4 times a month sometimes, just going for a walk to think. It's pretty good. But anyway, I went on this walk, and I got to the end of this street I usually walk on, but I didn't feel like I was done, so I kept going, eventually I walked by Walt Morey and Albertson's and then I walked back home. I got home around 2 so I was just walking for like an hour and a half. There really is something magical about it though. That's why I do it so much. For me, doing that walk is extremely sentimental. There was absolutely no humorousness in that entire walk. I was thinking about it and it's probably just because I've walked it so many times. I figure I've walked up and down this road, Hensley, at least 100 times, probably more like 150. And that's not even counting the recent running I've been doing. I don't know, there's not really anything special about this road in particular, but walking it, especially at night, really makes me appreciate Troutdale, it gives me a whole appreciation for it, my hometown and all. There's probably even a sweet symbol in this road somewhere. I mean, it is where I grew up, and I feel absolutely safe walking on it, even in the dead of night, so there's a sweet innocence factor in there.

There's this new development on this road, like, just put up 3 years ago or something like that. Every time I walk by it, I just feel like it's not really Troutdale. That little block is just a bunch of foreigners. It feel so weird everytime. But I can't even remember what used to be there. I can't envision what must have been a field there before. That's probably because I didn't really walk it until they started building.

In the end I guess it's just about keeping that little peice of your youth alive. Even though I'm doing the whole college scene these days, it's nice to come back here and just walk, like I used to. I even think about some of the same people I used to. Hopefully I can come back to this house in 10 years and go for a night walk down along the same road I've done hundreds of times before, and just be brought back. Even if it's just for an hour and a half.