Quixotica

Snow = cold.
Also, my family's pretty badass.

Film at eleven.

Talmud sez Jews love t3h HAM!

After spending some intimate personal time with the general theory of relativity, I feel qualified to indulge the reader in my opinion that the basic postulates of special relativity were essentially Albie E.'s own personal "fuck you" to the world at large.

Especially when it comes to the implications of time dilation; every time I try and plausibly imagine a scenario in which space might contract relative to the observer, all I can see is Einstein ripping into a chunk of raw steak in one hand while punching me in the face with the other. Occasionally, he'll finish off with a little impromptu air guitar.

Road trip to San Fran!



I wants some teriyaki donuts.

*sniff*

This spot has languished far too long; this sort of thing is what I'm interested in doing as a source of income (secondary to panhandling) and so I guess I'd bloody well better get on with it.

I'm writing something here today.

This post so I have no excuse.

EDIT: Okay, I lied. I blame Guitar Hero. No love for teh whammy.

So I found this huge used bookstore in Anaheim that's going of business next month.

Currently they're running a 70% off sale, and it can only get better in the next few weeks.

I, uhh...dropped like forty bucks there this morning. But hear me out.

I got like, a hundred and thirty dollars worth of books.

$130.

I appreciate that you're geeky enough to have remained vaguely intrigued thus far, but beware: the image you are about to see is not for the faintly interested!

Behold my bibliophilic bounty!



I know it's a bit blurry, allow me to elucidate:

1. Various Vampire: The Masquerade books (including a first edition copy of the Player's Guide.)
2. Exalted Storyteller's Companion.
3. Mage Boston sourcebook.
4. A copy of Mutants & Masterminds, a few books for Aberrant and Trinity, an old White Wolf quarterly, uhh..lessee..an old Shadowrun adventure...and oh yeah...
5. A copy of First Edition Shadowrun! It's not worth any money or anything, it's just ridiculously cool! C'mon! 1980's cyberpunk! Mohawks! Neon bikinis! Radical!

And they had even more weird and cool stuff! An original copy of Hoyle's Games, military survival manuals from the 70's, weird bibles...

Waste of two hours and forty dollars? Absolutely.

Awesome Sunday morning? F'sho.

Also:

Me: 1 Wisdom teeth: 0

This looks fascinating. I'm seriously considering sitting down this weekend and giving it a shot.

But only if I get to play Zimbabwe.

Also, shiny.

In the last few hours I ate like, five candy bars, two or three packs of Reese's, and a shit-ton of snack size. Not to mention a few handfuls of candy corn. I'm a dumbass, and I must taste delicious.

I'm a pretty lady.

So.

I've been admitted to San Francisco State, San Jose State, and Cal State Fullerton.

Provisionally.

You would think this would be awesome news.

Thanks to the mind-bogglingly laborious syntactic oddities inherent in the Sino-Japanese linguistic structure, you would be wrong.

Transfer Applications
A Haiku?

College Admissions
Sublime Ripples in Still Water?
Honky cain't even rhyme

BWAHAHAHA!

#$@! YEAH.

Yet another reason to avoid soy: not only is it specifically made for wussy leaf-chewing vegans, it actually makes you gay.

I wanna bake a pie, man. Seriously. I'm jonesin' for something new, and I bet I can pull it off too; I've got a badass idea for an oatmeal fruit crust that I know will fry up fine.

You heard me.
Badass oatmeal fruit crust.
Bring it.

I've just had a ridiculously good day today.

For absolutely no definable reason, either. Good karma or harmonious chi, I guess.

Got a B on my first physics midterm, that puts me right on the low end of an A in the class.

Think I missed an opportunity to ask that cute girl in Japanese class out on a date. Oh well. I've got the rest of the semester, you gotta give the magic a chance to simmer.

Billy Sharpton said he liked my hair today in third period biology. He's so dreamy! Also, puppies = omg teh cutest!

Sorry.

Felt sorta Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.-ish. Guess I'd better bring the noise. Bring the funk.

Or something.

Nah, I got nothing. Too sublime a day, nothing to complain about. Got my first Kanji test tomorrow, probably gonna bomb it.

No worries though, I've got a good feeling about it.

Mmmkay.

I know I slacked off, with a perfect run of zero for seven when it comes to photographic evidence of my culinary (mis)adventures; I can only offer excuses of the weakest sort, having been unable to puzzle out the disjointed and arcane connection apparati that are intended to bring together my camera and desktop in perfect union. In the end, I simply resorted to the crappy camera phone, thus the funky quality on about half the pictures. Still, when contemplating the final product it might be better to get a bit of distortion between the viewer and the rather pale and unappetizing platters I managed to turn out. This is not to imply any lack of taste or texture; rather, the truth was much the contrary in that just about everything I prepared looked dull and tasted delicious. Undercooked chicken is especially delicious, both flavorful and tender; all I need to work on is presentation and actually cooking the meat thoroughly, and I figure I graduate to the hallowed culinary rank of College Student With Microwave. Don't believe me?


I forgot which day I cooked what, so I'm just tossing these to the motherf@#!?%n' wind. One of the better meals, taste and presentation-wise: hawaiian pineapple chicken teriyaki kabobs with brown rice and salad. Salmonellicious!


Cell phone camera! Also came out surprisingly good, considering I had absolutely no idea what I was doing other than putting a bunch of crap in a skillet and chucking it around like the Swedish Chef with a feral wolverine clamped to his wrist. Err, hawaiian teriyaki egg-fried rice with shrimp and veggies FTW!


Now we get into the boring stuff; this was a quick dinner one night, and the only claim to any sort of culinary effort expended was that I had to prepare and consume whole-wheat pasta for the first time. Turns out, dark brown pasta == light brown pasta. Anyway, homemade ceviche on top of whole-wheat angel hair pasta to make a pretty basic seafood pasta delicious. If I could have figured out some sort of sauce to make with it, would have been even better.


Shrimp sandwich for lunch one day. Novel idea, and came out pretty delicious. Not much actual cooking involved, short of broiling the finished creation in the oven for a few minutes to melt the cheese and other sundries and bring out that panini-press toasted look. Also, giant white hand!




These were pretty awesome; essentially, they're "Berry Burgers" which are prepared my mixing coarsely-diced fruit in with hand-made hamburger patties. The taste of the individual fruit doesn't come through, but it does make the burger much sweeter and juicier. I tried it with blueberries and then pineapples; if you ever actually give this a shot, try the blueberries first. The burgers were delicious and the added sweetness contrasted beautifully with the sharp flavors of the onions and pickles. And since those pictured above included pineapples, I had to slather on some Hawaiian Pineapple Teriyaki Sauce (tm); that stuff is made of ultimate win. And Jews!


Another cop-out; so much of a cop-out in fact, that as you can see I forgot about taking a picture until I was about three-quarters through with the meal. This was some hawaiian pineapple teriyaki chicken with whole-grain couscous, taken to work and reheated. Turns out that yes, that plastic is microwave-safe! However, apparently crappy disposable plastic silverware is not. Alas.


Another cheap cop-out, this was the first time I'd ever had cottage cheese with cinnamon and cayenne pepper. I've recently taken up late-night cottage cheese snacks as a way to help gain muscle (supposedly) and so far it's had absolutely no noticeable effect. Still, it was delicious and that's enough for now.

I had another cheesy picture of some canned sardines I snacked on one day when I didn't cook anything, but it seems my phone fails at transmitting in the dank suburban cavern whence I dwell. If I have seven above, great; if not, just take my word for it. Or wait; I've been meaning to try and bake up some cheesecake after finding this awesome recipe, and I only need like two ingredients that aren't readily available. Who knows; as for the going under budget thing, umm...I kept all the receipts, but really I don't see much point in going through the work of totaling it all up when I'm almost certain I went over budget. Still, on each shopping excursion about half of what I picked up was just for general sustenance and had nothing to do with these recipes, so I don't feel so bad about spending so much. Did you know a jar of pickles is like, four freaking bucks? A cucumber is thirty-five cents. Is vinegar and salt the fabled Philosopher's Stone of food storage, able to turn lead into gold and a bunch of cucumbers worth a buck into five dollars of pure culinary gold?

Bastards.

Oh, hey. There might be a few pictures in this post.

Just a heads-up.

So I cooked an awesome dinner tonight, even got a picture; but for some reason my computer isn't auto-detecting the camera when I plug it in, and I'm too lazy to fiddle with it. So instead, you'll just have to trust me when I say that grilled chicken pineapple kabobs with a hawaiian teriyaki glaze over brown rice is ridiculously delicious. Unfortunately, kabob-style grilling made it ridiculously easy to undercook the chicken, so that fully half the pieces I ate weren't cooked through; salmonella FTL, but on the upside undercooked chicken is tender. Totally worth it.

Also, my supposed friends are lame. With the exception of Josh; I guess he has school 'till retarded late or something.

Holy shit, I think I love cottage cheese.

As for that great new idea I mentioned earlier, eh; in hindsight, it's just a mildly interesting idea. Essentially, after an hour and a half of watching the food network I decided it would be a really smart idea to spend the next week in my own personal culinary hell; ideally, I would make and stand by a commitment to prepare one new dish a day for seven days. I meant to get started yesterday, and I actually did but forgot to take pictures. Today I took pictures, but forgot to bring the camera; so far, I'm 0 for 2. So I'm gonna dredge up the picture I took today of my crappy culinary creation (seafood ceviche on a bed of angel hair pasta) and post it tomorrow, along with (hopefully) whatever I cook tomorrow. In summary, here are the rules:

1. I must consume one new thing every day, which I have prepared. This is a wide stricture, and intentionally so; ideally I should be cooking a new dish with a new or weird ingredient every day, but as long as something I eat is prepared in a new way or is just a new culinary experience it counts. Thus should my fading social life actually shake it up a bit, I'm in the clear. I've already bought a pack of sardines (I hear they're a good high-protein snack,) so I'm set.
2. I must photograph whatever it is I prepare, to document my shoddy cooking for future generations to ogle.
3. I must keep track of how much money I spend on ingredients, and it is not to exceed $70 for the week. This equates to the estimated $10 a day I would otherwise spend on a takeout meal. I've already been to the store twice, once for a bill totaling thirteen something and the other fifteen something, so total (rounded up) I've dipped into $30 of my allotted amount so far.

So I got this really interesting idea, but I don't wanna jinx it before I even start; just wanted to make sure this website still worked ;). Assuming everything goes well, I'll post about it tomorrow.

I can't believe I finally have a Saturday off work, and I'm spending it sitting at home in front of the computer.

I need new friends.

Mmm....

Apparently, I can cook. Grilled hawaiian teriyaki chicken FTW!

Fuck you, body.

I know where you live.

DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN.

LEMON SORBET IS DELICIOUS.

IT'S DELICIOUSNESS RIVALS THAT OF CAKE.

I know I sound like a 45-year-old overweight mother of two squealing about the latest Oprah-sanctioned Atkins-brand weight loss dessert bar, but I don't care. DELICIOUS CAKE!

OUR TASTEBUDS CANNOT REPEL FLAVOR OF THIS MAGNITUDE!

So I'm gonna try and go this whole post without any sarcasm or meaningless alliterative rambling; I think it could be good practice.

Think I'm finally sick; just a scratchy throat, but it still ruins my silly record. I wanted to make it to 2008 without getting sick again; then I could say I hadn't been sick in over a year since changing my diet. Oh well, maybe nobody will notice. Or maybe I just lost my voice talking to customers over the weekend; yeah, that's it.

Feeling lazy all week; wanted to keep up with my increased weight-lifting program and diet, try and put some weight on; but every time some tiny bit of muscle builds, it looks funny to me. I think the fault lies squarely with my low self-image; when I look in the mirror, I don't have any sort of outside reference. This is why I always think I'm not really that tall; when I look in the mirror, I'm the only one there. When it comes to my own perceptions, well, I've spent most of my life looking at my peer's foreheads so it doesn't seem the least bit strange. But when I glance in a mirrored storefront while walking with my friends or biking past total strangers (today), I notice how tall and gangly I look in comparison. Believe it or not, that's a good thing; I've spent most of my life being tall and hulking, so being tall and lean is kinda fun. Still, it doesn't help that every time I see a little muscle building on my funky-shaped frame I think it looks weird. The point? I haven't been hitting the gym as hard as I've wanted, and I've unconsciously slipped back onto my weight-loss diet. While it's nice to feel light, I don't think I need to lose any more weight. Ahh well, I'm still healthy.

Biked around town today to check prices on cell phones, feel a little less lazy. I'm seriously favoring the LG VX8300, which is really irritating because it's the exact same phone Tyler had, until he upgraded for the umpteenth time. While it's great for him, it's mildly irritating because I'm looking at paying (at the cheapest) $120 or so for a phone that he essentially had no use for (and thus could have given me a significant discount on, if not for free) but unfortunately, he lost it somewhere at Steven's; since anything lost there has essentially no chance of ever finding it's way back to us, I've actually got to pay money to replace the phone I destroyed. The injustice! Still, I'm looking at buying a refurbished phone on eBay (that's the price above; new, the handset runs to about $230) and praying for a good seller.

Need to start my research for the research paper due a week from today; probably tomorrow.

Ahhh, lunchtime. Turkey sandwich ain't so bad, but Trader Joe's eggplant hummus = ultimate win. That's about the only good thing I managed to get out of that place; why is it so goddamn hard to find bread and bread-related products that are 100% whole wheat? WE WANT 100% WHOLE WHEAT BREAD. Not 7-grain enriched bread, not multi-grain enriched bread, PLAIN BREAD IS STILL GRAIN. WE KNOW. Stop making me have to look like some goddamn hippie freak reading all the damn bread labels for your hidden enriched wheat flour and high fructose corn syrup, JUST MAKE A WHOLE GRAIN BREAD. OBVIOUSLY, WE DON'T CARE HOW IT TASTES. WE'RE HIPPIES, IF WE WANTED CHEAP TASTE WE'D BUY WONDERBREAD. Sorry, I harbor a great deal of unrequited anger at bread manufacturers. Bastards.

Wow. Somehow, I manage to waste a ton of time accomplishing very little. I've got to head out around 6, and it's already five and I've yet to get a shower, feed the animals or prepare dinner, much less start researching Joan d'Arc or spend any time working on preparing game for Thursday. I also wanted to do a bunch of crunches; oh well.

Man, I hope we make it out to the beach on Friday. I'm tired of arguing with people.

The portrait of the studious black man below is titled Barefoot Prophet; taken by James VanDerZee in 1929, it's an image of Elder Clayhorn Martin of Harlem. Also known as Prophet Martin or the Barefoot Prophet, Martin was known as an eccentric street preacher who would wander the streets proselytizing to whomever would listen.

Just so you know.

Bored.

That is all.

Oh...

BEACH ON FRIDAY BITCHES.

Carry on.

Apparently, my sister is unimpressed with my mastery of the native fashion.

So uh, hey.
What's up with you?
You know all those nonsense posts that show up here, with no more justification or unifying purpose than I felt an uncertain and intangible obligation to comment on my lack of unifying purpose or justification?
Yeah. It's one of those.

Man. Breakfast was awesome.
No, seriously. Hear me out.
Oftentimes the current Western dietary schedule has been lambasted by snide detractors, many of whom immigrate from areas of divergent cultural backgrounds. We have it backwards, I've heard it said; what you ought to do to live a long and healthy life is eat big in the morning and wind down in the evening, instead of our current practice of breakfasting light (or commonly not at all) and consuming meals of increasing volume as the day progresses. I've tried it both ways for months at a time, and I have to agree; if the objective of life is to feel energetic and purposeful, a dietary change can have a significant effect. I offer little more than my own experiences as evidence: I've lost over fifty pounds in the last eight to ten months, and while I do exercise semi-regularly the bulk of my change in discipline has taken place in the heady arena of gastronomy. This morning I consumed a big bowl of cereal (about a cup and a half of this Kashi GoLean stuff, the overall healthiest enriched cereal I could find) with: a whole banana (diced), a whole kiwi (diced), two handfuls of fresh blueberries (a little more than half a cup, but who knows; I have big hands) an egg white (for extra protein; this is not a typical day's ingredient) and a handful of walnuts. I think almonds are a little better for you than walnuts, but they're more expensive and I run out quicker. Once this massive cornucopia of macrobiotic flava is finally assembled, about a cup to a cup and a half of soymilk is unceremoniously dumped on top (I took a day to measure what I was eating about a week ago, thus all the rough approximations are still fresh) and the whole thing is complemented beautifully by a piece of random fruit (nectarine today FTW), a big bottle of water and a hot cup of green tea.

Upon re-reading the above paragraph (and I think you'll agree with me here) I find that I sound like nothing so much as a goddamned hippie. But I'm cool with that; if I seem over-enthusiastic about the quality of my daily meal, well why aren't you having as much fun with your food? You eat at least two to three times every day (about five to six times for me); why not live it up? For example, today's glorious morning (I woke up at seven on a Monday morning mid-July; lame.) repast was followed two and a half hours or so later by a snack of a handful of walnuts and a pear, then lunch three hours later of a turkey sandwich with this weird Ezekiel 4:9 sprout bread I picked up 'cause it was cheap (it appears to be bread made not only from wheat, but from lentils and millet, totally hippie), a whole tomato (sliced), a couple handfuls of spinach, a smattering of hummus and about 10-12 carrot sticks. Oh, and a crapload of water and another cup of green tea. I'm looking forward to another fruit snack and then a big salad for dinner tonight, with diced chicken (which I've still got to cook up, crap) and a smattering of assorted leftovers in the fridge. I think I've got some green peas and soybeans left, and perchance some blueberries.

This all probably seems like an awful lot of trouble when you could be doing something more interesting, but seriously; it's just you and the monitor there, who are you kidding? In terms of preparation time (including cooking up a couple pieces of chicken) I will have spent maybe a half hour on food today, tops. In comparison, I spent from about 7:15 this morning to about 12:30 this afternoon playing Neverwinter Nights 2; I'd still be playing, if I hadn't made myself go find something else to do. The same goes for you; with the sheer volume of text this post is demanding, you'll likely have spent at least ten minutes or so reading through it, more if you had to look up "lambasted". If you'd spent that time thinking about your nutritional plans for the coming day instead of laboriously working your way through my dull meanderings, you might have made a few interesting and potentially invigorating choices and decisions instead of realizing that I'd left my original point gasping for relevancy about a paragraph and a half ago. So let me finish this up and go find something useful to do: by eating your biggest meal of the day at breakfast and winding down progressively from there (i.e. big carbohydrate-laden breakfast, medium lunch with even balance of nutrional elements, and a relatively modest dinner consisting primarily of meats and vegetables) you will maintain a healthier body mass and feel more full and energetic when it makes the most sense (in the morning and afternoon) and leaner and less energetic when it comes time for bed. You'll sleep better (I've found) and wake up with more energy and anticipation of the coming day.

Christ help me, I sound like a diet pill infomercial sandwiched between the Home Shopping Network and that commercial for the broom thingy that cleans ceilings; what happened to my tough, cynical exterior? I've lost all my pessimistic faux-intellectual street cred; I'd better salvage what's left as best I can...

Uhh...politicians are big smelly liars? Religion is the opiate of the masses? Reality TV is for sheep?

Guess I've lost my edge...I'm off to walk downtown and stand around turning my nose up at all the emo kids standing around turning their nose up at all the pedestrian fools turning their nose up at all the young people with nothing better to do than stand around all day turning their nose up at people.

Does anyone even say that someone was "turning their nose up" anymore? Man I feel old...

So, I was gonna bullshit a big long post.

But instead, I decided to reinstall and play Bloodlines for an hour.

But while I'm waiting for it to install, here you go.

We discussed Plato's allegory of the cave today in class, and I found that after reading it anew what I once thought to be a wry and insightful look at society concealed a number of niggling irritations which only now begin to make themselves known. Not much time, the program's already half-finished; thus I'll mention only my greatest gripe, that Plato's imagined story is far too heavy-handed. When the seeker descends back into the depths, his eyes adjust poorly to the dim conditions after being exposed to the dazzling brilliance of the outside world and he has great difficulty distinguishing the particulars regarding the shadows projected on the wall before his fellows. Since the prisoners' only pastime is interpreting the shapes thrown onto the wall, this activity is solely responsible for their determination of social hierarchy; when their vagrant companion finally returns, not only has he gained nothing from his ascension, he has in fact lowered himself in his pursuit of truth. Plato emphasizes the seeker's sense of pity for his former compatriots, bemoaning their lack of understanding and willingness to remain in ignorance; but if the seeker were truly changed by his discovery of a world beyond what his senses first made clear to him, does it not logically follow (assuming the seeker isn't a colossal boor) that the greatest truth gained from the climb was not that the light was truthful, but that the senses were false? Oh hell, the program's done and I've gotten nowhere but the most basic restatement of a premise most everyone should already be familiar with. Let me sum up:

The allegory of the cave (and likely, of Socrates' trial and execution) contains some elements of truth but is ultimately overweening and heavy-handed in that the protagonist never truly learns to accept that his senses are worthy of doubt; rather, he discovers the brilliance of the outside world, and then assumes that it is truth. He returns to the cave and reigns in pity over his chained brethren, secure in his lofty certainty that he has seen Truth. But if this new truth renders his old assumptions and world-view obsolete, is not the first lesson to assume is fallacious? What proof does he have that the truth he has found is absolute?

In truth, I covered little of what I actually wanted to delve into, none of it new or even terribly intriguing. Oh well; I'm off to shoot zombies. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow.

I was gonna write something here, just to fill up space.

But I've felt this niggling need to be active like, all day long.

My unrequited urge to pant and sweat demands that I fulfill my unholy need for blueberries and kiwi by running down to the store, whereupon I will stagger about like unto a man possessed, calling out in craven tones for the citrus so desperately desired.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix OF DELICIOUS KIWI.

Disjointed? Hardly.

I'm making myself write something here; any creative impulses I might possess have been methodically stifled beneath a barrage of entertaining media. Thank god for Stevie Wonder.

In recent years I've come to develop a certain love-hate relationship with the written word, and in point of fact the entirety of human communication. Bear with me for a moment; all things considered, communication (verbal and written forms especially) is pretty swanky. My irritation stems mainly from trying to communicate the idea in it's most perfect form to others in a smooth and efficient manner. Such attempts invariably end in failure from the first fricative uttered; with the limitations of current information exchange methods, no human being seems capable of interpreting the ideas of another in the exact method intended. While I'm all for human individuality and the impulsive creativity of the unconventional zeitgeist, I find this inherent inability to accurately communicate absolutely maddening.
For example: I turn to a trusted compatriot, intending to regale them with but the latest tale in an admittedly extensive list of tomfoolery and attempted shenanigans. I mention sighting a stray dog; immediately, my accomplice has flashes of perhaps ten to fifteen canines he's observed in his lifetime, likely in order of personal importance. Already, we've deviated from my original account (since it's highly unlikely the dog I mention is the dog he visualizes.) Next, I elaborate further on the setting and mention that this errant mongrel was sighted on a city sidewalk. Eyes flashing and fulgent in the setting sun, my oh-so attentive listener instantly conjures up a wide variety of images of suburban streetscapes pulled directly from a lifetime spent straying across said cityscapes. None of these images is the one I've mentioned; the wrong street compounded with the wrong subject means we're already 0 for 2, and I haven't even gotten to the gorillas. By the time the sordid tale is told, my attentive listener has already surrounded himself with a fairytale fantasy of suburban stupefaction that is utterly unrelated to whatever preposterous point I had foolishly set out to convey.

Anyway.

Tried playing City of Heroes; pretty awesome for the first few levels, but grinding in any form these days is an instant fun-killer. Still, one shining ray of hope emerged from the inimitable tedium: the hottest harbinger since the big man himself, a brilliant bolt of badass sraight outta the Nile Delta, here to kick ass and chew bubblegum!


The newest superhero to hit the mean streets of Paragon City: Guns N' Moses!


Cleanin' up crime, Old Testament style!



Suddenly, nuns! Thousands of them!

OMFG.

I was gonnna sit down and make myself write on a topic that interests me.

I think possible topics were things like nutrition, tabletop gameplay mechanics, and summer trips to the Ottoman Empire.

But @#$! that!

SHAFT!

I just discovered the Best Buy Rhapsody Music Store.

This must be what all those new-age iPod kids are talking about, with their iBooks and iPhones and hah oh man I can't even finish. I just found William Shatner's spoken word albums on this thing. I'm done.

Lucy in the sky? With diamonds? Fuck yeah!

Went to the beach.

Pretty awesome.

If you didn't go, you missed out.

Rollin' wit my thugs; nothing more need be said.

Wait, what? You thought you'd get away without gratuitous space-filling pictures?
























































That's right; if you didn't go, you missed out on a mother#@?$! piece of mother&%#@! DENMARK.

We got Mediterranean cuisine.

And yogurt.

And culture.

"Soon the child's clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor of the ego. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines, and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise."

Work is lame.

They make me wear funny clothes.



And work in tiny, boring, neutral-toned spaces.



Still, regular paychecks FTW.
Wish I had something more interesting to say.
But I've got to be at work in half an hour.
Mebbe tonight?
Probably not ;)

Also, whoever thought a morning jog was a good idea should be dragged out into the street and shot.

Crappy office job FTW!

Waking up at 5 tomorrow FTL...

School's over.

Finals are done.

Quit my job a week ago.

Took care of all the passport and scholarship paperwork.

Everything that's been hanging over my head has been taken care of. Summer classes don't start for two weeks, giving me plenty of time to relax and enjoy summer break.

...

Man I'm bored.

So, in my feverent joy I missed a few things.

To recap:

- Free from Baskin & Robbin's. Fuck you, service economy.

- I have a history of looking bored and/or high. Go figure.

- Getting passport renewed because I'M GOING TO ISTANBUL. #$%@ CONSTANTINOPLE!

- I KNOW!

- Gotta miss AX to go. Long Beach FTL. Byzantium FTW!

That will be all.

Carry on.

Free at last, free at last,
Thank God Almighty, I'm free at last!




Getting my passport renewed.



July 2000.



May 2007.

Seven years.
What the hell happened?
And why do I always look bored or high?

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo
Questa fiamma staria sensa piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero
Sensa tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

PWND?

Happy seis de mayo!

I thought it important that I attempt to narrate a post while inebriated.

I dunno, it seemed like the thing to do. I wanted to evaluate my ability to cognitively craft sentences, and so far it seems stable if mildly uninteresting.

I was disappointed; while I hadn't set out for the fiesta with the objective of getting "smashed," once there I decided that I ought to at least try and experience what so many young college males had supposedly spent their whole freshman year "experiencing."

I do not suspect that I am "smashed," as you call it; rather, I had a couple glasses of various types of alcohol and am now experiencing a thoroughly interesting interpretation of existence. For those of you who have never consumed alcohol, it is a difficult sensation to describe, and thus I will not attempt to do so. Rather, I will simply say that though I had at first felt a most imperative need to refrain from consuming any substance that would impair my judgemental capability, once presented with the reality of such a situation it became obvious that such naivete was exactly that: willful naivete on my part.

I have often told myself that I would not consume substances which would impair my judgement, because in my opinion my intelligence and ability to reason were the only things I had going for me. Having now experienced at least a small part of what it means to be truly intoxicated, let me just say that I was absolutely right and yet at the same time so naively wrong. My judgement (however faulty you may feel it to be) is in truth all I truly have going for me in this existence. I was born neither handsome nor comely, nor was I gifted with extraordinary strength, speed or stamina. I was lucky enough to be born into a close-knit family which taught me the value of honesty and hard work (however much I've failed to uphold those values), as well as the importance of a supportive family environment. Beyond that, I felt I had only my own reason and wits to rely on in setting myself apart from the archetypal crowded masses.

I don't feel that I was entirely wrong; rather, I feel that it was foolish of me to assume that one moment of weakness would signal the downfall of my carefully constructed carapace of morals. Such a line of reasoning is immature; if one's beliefs and morals cannot withstand a test of one's true self, can they truly be considered truth? If I was so afraid to test my own ethical limits, might it not have been because those limits were faulty to begin with?

I must admit I'm impressed; (or at least, I hope I'm impressed; it's hard to tell at this point) I didn't expect to be able to form complete sentences, much less manage complex punctuation. I do hope this looks as good tomorrow morning as it does this evening; I'd hate to think I was delusional as well as drunk.

But drunk's a strong word; I suspect that at my worst, I was only significantly tipsy; I say suspect, because my experience with the sensation can best be described as "non-existent." Still, it was a worthwhile experience and I don't think I'd trade it for anything. The next time some holiday or event comes up in which the ritual communal celebratory consumption of alcoholic beverages is encouraged, I think I'll be one of the first to encourage it; to actually feel my conscious control slowly degrade was a fascinating feeling, and I'm interested in exploring the extremes to which the human condition will go once under the effects of such insidious intoxicants. It should be more amusing than this paragraph, at least.

Also:

Screw you guys. I know I drank Garrett's supposedly THC-laced rum like, four times. EVERY TIME, I could remember taking a sip earlier; I just wasn't sure, and wanted to double-check with my supposedly SOBER and TRUSTWORTHY friends. Foolish, I know; next time, I'm just gonna punch myself in the face as I suspect it would be quicker and less goofy.

Meagan, I'm sorry if my continual reference to your Hebrew heritage offended you; at some early point in the evening I seized upon the concept of a Jewish princess as inherently insouciant, and I suspect that I might have carried the joke a bit too far. On behalf of the Jewish people, and all the followers of Abraham, I apologize. Bracha kol isha.

And to everyone, I apologize if my Caucasian dance moves were too much to bear. I am known for bringing the funk, and I know that sometimes the sheer weight of my groove can bring the house down, so to speak. If our rendition of "Twister Moves" was too intense, I take full responsibility.

I was not born to dance quietly.

I was born to rock.

My sister pointed out to me today that I shouldn't be allowed to dress myself.

Rightfully so, I suspect. Green, white and blue might not seem so bad if tastefully arranged, but the blue and pink plaid heart boxers suggestively peeking out may have taken the viewer's eye down a road better left less traveled.

I was not put on this earth to match.

I was put on this earth to rock.

As always, dawn sheds a different light on struggles long past. In review, I've come to admit that I hold several deep-seated grudges close to my heart. While an honest account would result in pages and pages of sordidly sinful spite, it would be pertinent to address some of the most glaring in light of yesterday's vehement diatribe.

First, (and most glaringly I feel) I loathe gorillas. Uppity bastards think sharing 98% of their DNA with humans entitles them to walk around on their knuckles all day, waving their ass in the air and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Did a gorilla invent fire? The wheel? Parachute pants?
I thought so.

Secondly, I can't help but feel a certain distate for East Islanders. However, this pales in comparison to my rabid contempt for Papua, New Guinea. Be warned, Papuans: should we ever encounter each other, perhaps at a local street fair or Civil War re-enactment, know that I shall heap concentrated scorn upon your shaven heads. It is highly likely that your matrilineal heritage shall be called into question. That is all.

But really, I feel that the most glaring flaw in my personality brought to light by such feverish narrative is my all-consuming hatred for the comma. Sure, many aspects of English punctuation elicit feelings of mistrust and revulsion, but none do so with the simple impertinence of this most abhorrent spawn of mankind. Cheeky blighters can't even be bothered to actually do any work, serving essentially as the grammatical representation of a noncommital shrug. Does the sentence end, is the point made, is the clause finished? Thanks to the insidious debauchery of the comma, we may never know.

Soooo...

Game is cancelled, apparently. That's okay; I have a ton of homework to do to rap up this semester, and to be honest I was attending more out of obligation than general interest anyway.

I've been asked on more than one occasion to explain what thought processes lead a man to sit at a table for two to five hours at a time arguing with other (assumably sane) men about the logistical difficulties inherent in the mobilization of a group of nonexistent ne'er-do-wells in a spectral shrine to delusive, displaced deities while piles of brightly-colored dice and worn paper sit forlorn, forgotten in deference to the unbound ego.

For those of you who've asked, let me first equate roughly the level of difficulty in providing an answer that sounds reasonably like the words of a balanced individual as being somewhere between higher-level vector calculus and mud-wrestling an irate silverback gorilla in front of 20,000 sweaty East Islanders. What do you say? I like playing with dolls? Imaginary dolls, no less? If your chosen form of egotistical self-pleasuring fantasy happens to take place almost entirely in your head, is that more or less respectable than the 38-year-old day manager at Target who spends every other weekend suited up in the garb of Brom Darkstrider, dark elf crusader extraordinaire whose foam-coated mop handle, Nightblade, is always at the ready?

It ends up too often descending into a comedy of lies, evasion, and general buffoonery in an effort to distract the poor inquirer from one obvious truth: it's a geeky, off-beat pastime that has little redeeming value. Don't let anyone who spouts off nonsense like "interactive theater" or "live-action dramatic exercises" fool you; anyone who actually believes they're furthering their dramatic proficiency by playing the role of a winsome half-elven princess adrift in a confusing world rife with conflicting ideals and values is obviously not paying attention to the fat kid in the next seat over who's clutching a handful of six-sided dice like an octogenarian at the craps bench in Atlantic City. There's little to no appreciable benefit; at least Brom Darkstrider gets a little sun and exercise every month. It often isn't even that much fun: trying to agree with five other people on what, exactly, constitutes a short sword as opposed to a long sword can be an entertaining exercise in triviality even BEFORE you realize that this imaginary universe you've spent most of the evening in was thoughtfully crafted without benefit of the metric system. When you start getting into how many hands and spans exactly constitute a meter and how many meters define a blade, well, blood has been spilt over less.

In the end, the best answer I've ever been able to give is simply because. Because I enjoy it. Because it's something to do. Because it's cheap. Because the majority of the time, it's just a thin excuse for a reason to hang out without feeling like lazy, underachieving bums. I had a different ending in mind for this account, but as usual I've ended up somewhere far afield from where I'd planned to be. That's half the fun, really; not often taking the time to think about what I'm going to say, it's always an adventure to hear what comes out.

Guess I'd better finish my homework in the morning.



PWND.

Magical negro?

OMGWTFBBQ. Stem cells FTL.

We delved deep into the seedy underbelly of Hollywood, descending discreetly to the very belly of the beast.

And it was delicious.

A dark and dismal trek through a valley of untold horror led me to a magical elysium, called "Glendale" by some.


A veritable cornucopia of licentious delights awaited me once I passed the Gatekeeper's scrutiny.



Inside this hideous den of degeneracy and vice I ventured, careful not to disturb the native inhabitants in their daily struggles.



Just some dude I found earlier with a wicked afro. So jealous. Anyway.



Uhh...

Horrible golden idols to a false divinity lined the walks, polished to a tawny sheen which reflected the hidden sins of a hypocritical society!



I claimed my prize and made good my escape, quietly lamenting my decision to delve into this most secret heart of man.