Quixotica

To be honest, I just wanted to bump that annoying turkey game off the front page.

"I was going to wax poetic about a number of topics you have no interest in, but as a very important person I have a number of very important things to do which preclude me from lavishing my attentions on the unwashed."

/\ The passage above summarizes the average introduction to these entries, and it is my sincere belief that you will never suffer through writing of its ilk where I can prevent it.

I am very excited about a number of things, exceedingly anxious about many more; if you're interested, I might take advantage of this space to work a few of them out with you.

Many things have changed in the past few years, and I only hope the majority of my decisions prove positive. A foolish hope, as how could one ever objectively judge the worth of choices never made?

I often feel as though I should be apologizing for who I choose to be, and perhaps some day I will. For now, I ask only that you switch off the monitor for a moment and take a long look at your murky reflection.

Is this all you ever wanted?

I was going to write a deep and suitably epic retelling of time well-spent in the city by the bay until I realized that I'd be seeing the entirety of my audience in like, 4 days. Looking forward to a week off, here's a little something to get warmed up for the holiday season.



See y'all Saturday ;)

It's over; time to finally make good on all those promises while the whole world watches.




No pressure.

Alcohol + high fructose corn syrup = words are hard so it's a picture-heavy post, just a heads-up.




The usual painfully purple prose is difficult; instead, let's try for terse description. It'll be like a Sam Spade paperback, if Spade drank Long Islands and wandered the dirty soulless streets with pockets full of fun-size Snickers.

Anyway.



With no Halloween plans to speak of things were looking grim; I'd seriously conidered writing a holiday coverage piece for extra credit, a sure sign of naked desperation.

Providence has a flair for the dramatic, and the night before the fateful holiday an acquaintance I hadn't spoken to in weeks called to inform me they were forming a Dr. Horrible group; a lanky beanpole stand-in for the inimitable NPH was desperately needed, was I a bad enough dude to tackle the part?




My heart skipped a beat at the offer. I like to think of myself as a pretty shady character, but this is Dr. Howser we're talking about; the man tames unicorns.

Bareback.



Thankfully I managed to root around beneath my skirt and find some balls. We assembled a pretty respectable group with Captain Hammer, his archnemesis, two Hammer groupie and even a decent Moist! My very own sidekick in tow we stepped out on the town, wandering the bars in the Haight and crashing a decidedly uncomfortable house party before arriving at some dive where a friend claimed to "know the band."

We scored some pretty sweet home-baked pumpkin spice bread and free lighters somewhere in there as well, but I digress.




Sex With No Hands took the stage, and though I was too busy head-banging with Fred Flintstone and the Reverse Cowgirl to pay much attention I think they did the joint justice; there was at least one kick-ass Ghostbusters theme cover.



That picture you see below was compiled at the behest of Those Guys In The Corner Booth; blank paper and Crayola were provided and drunken revelers proceeded to communally compile the greatest Rabbits vs. Scots epic ever told, one panel at a time. I guess they also went to Burning Man? They kept urging me to go, but I was too enthralled with my crayons to pay much heed. Rabbits and the Scottish, enemies since the dawn of time.



Slept in today, and all the horrible San Francisco weather held at bay by the sanctity of holidays involving candy was unleashed with an almost audible sigh. Walked four miles in pouring rain to mail the application packet for an internship I'll never land, then bummed around the apartment playing Fallout 3 and eating leftover candy. It's been a good few days.

My father has undertaken a seemingly spontaneous quest to convert a basement's worth of old family photographs to digital media. A highly technical task, to be sure; apparently he developed a clever means of transposition, circumventing the seemingly insurmountable physiological barriers between matter and energy by holding his digital camera really, really close to the paper.
Images akin to the one above have been flooding my inbox for the past few days, and I'm starting to wonder if this project might be a therapeutic means of dealing with the much-hyped "empty nest" syndrome I'v heard so much about. I also wonder why I'm wearing flannel. Then I remember I grew up in New Jersey, a hellish tundra so cold that in the winter they told us stories of pioneers boiling rocks just to have something warm to drink. You might think the stories of "rock soup" were just tall tales told to entertain children; I'm here to tell you that shit was real. Ever wonder why there aren't many elderly in Jersey? It's because most of them died trying to get to school in winter. They fell, cold and numb, their bodies providing a natural staircase up the hill to the schoolhouse. That's what it means to be from Jersey; it means that back in your day, you had to walk to school barefoot in the snow, uphill both ways, over the corpses of the weak. "Garden State" my ass.


I've lost thirteen pounds since I moved up here, and I managed to screw up my back so badly in the gym Friday that I spent most of the weekend hobbling about in a pose reminiscent of homo erectus with, well, a fucked-up back. I love San Francisco, but I think it's trying to kill me.

I just got panhandled via the Internet. Check out this email:



Dear Alexander Wawro,


Luis Pereira (luispereira7cv@gmail.com) would like to be paid through PayPal.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Money Request Details


Amount: €1.00 EUR

Event Date: Oct. 15, 2008

Note: Hi there, my name is Luís Pereira, unemployed for reasons of a work related accident and without the respective work fund for this cases, the thing is that my own boss just fired me before I had the chance to do something to secure my future while unemployed, now I face a pile of bills and the school monthly payments, I'm asking for a little help from you to try to keep me going through this rough fase.
Thanks for your time

ps: I just don't know what else to do...



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pay With PayPal

PayPal makes it easy to send Luis Pereira money. Click below to send this payment.


I would have sent him the measly euro if my account information was current; I respect that level of enterprise.

Gonna check out some fly rides this weekend. Also, eating; apparently I've lost ten pounds since I arrived. Huh.

So I've got this story due Monday, a piece I've yet to start concerning the recent San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting. Cue Saturday: the smooth caress of afternoon sunshine starts me on a wonderfully groggy quest for soapy absolution; after a "quick shower" that takes the better part of an hour, I putter about the cozy nook Park Merced lovingly deigns to call our two-bedroom apartment.

By two or so I figure there might be something to this whole academia trip, and suit up to catch the 2:08 M up to the Civic Center. I figure I'll hoof it up to Japan Center via Fillmore, maybe see if I can't corral a few outspoken locals to pad out my article with a touch of colorful commentary. Check out the Festival at the Center, snap a few pictures and catch the 38 back to Presidio; shit, with luck I'll make it back just in time for lunch. My British roommate and I haven't accomplished much in the way of interpersonal communication; our few opportunities for male bonding have taken place huddled over the toaster oven, in a mad quest for glory and the perfect ham sandwich.

I hit the rail station only to find a huge line at the ticket machine, something I've never seen even at peak hours. What's more, easily three quarters of these fretful fidgeters are tapping toes clad in vintage 70's footwear; at this point, I think images are a beast far more suited to carrying a narrative of this magnitude.


The train station looked like casting call for a low-budget 70's skin flick. Not pictured: copious quantities of glitter.


Standing room only, baby. I inadvertently felt up at least three people over the course of the trip. Not pictured: angry asian man whose butt I rubbed.


Welcome to LoveFest 2008! Not pictured: the three male nudists I met. You think I'm joking; one was in line to buy a Polish sausage.


Ray Charles didn't die; Elvis ate him. Not pictured: two gold teeth.


I've had it with these motherfuckin' hippies on this motherfuckin' plane! Not pictured: my cultural relevance.


This motherfucker was up on stage in full B-for-Balanced Breakfast ensemble, waving a flag like he was 7th Company taking back Hill 355. Not pictured: any attractive women.


I guess there was supposed to be a parade? Or floats? Maybe they just had a thing for pink effelumps on wheels. Not pictured: woozels.


Apparently, a pimped-out Santa spends the first weekend in October picking up trash and preaching about the dangers of public waste. Not pictured: My dignity.

I never made it past Civic Center; LoveFest stole my weekend. The music was horrible, the stench was worse and it was impossible to walk more than five feet without elbowing a midget in the face; I'm totally going back next year.

YouTube as the vanguard; you know this is a phone-in post.

I start to wonder whether or not this is the career for me; when it comes to writing, I spend most of my time at the keys playing with the relationships between language and syntax. Word choice takes precedence over clarity, and euphony always trumps conciseness. As a journalism student, I find this predilection is frequently at odds with the oft-stated objective to seek and disseminate truth as clearly as possible.

Also, Japanese is hard.

Did you guys see that the House failed to approve the bailout plan? I can't help but feel this is probably for the best; many pundits are forecasting doom and gloom for the world economy if we delay in pursuing an immediate solution. They might be right, but it seems like a poor idea to try and fix a problem we didn't anticipate due to market fluctuations that many in Congress don't seem to fully understand. I know this means our economic woes are far from over, but I'm more comfortable putting my faith in the free market while we wait for cooler heads to prevail.

I had a bit more to scrawl, but I took some NyQuil earlier and I think it's kicking in. Mmmm, antihistamine-induced coma.

I was privileged to reclaim my first submitted article from my professor today, with a bevy of helpful hints thrown in free of charge. The usual commendations regarding an expansive vocabulary, proficiency with the language etc. rang a little hollow; I'm 23 and finishing my upper-division coursework in a class that is widely touted as the "boot camp" of the department. The capability to string two cogent thoughts together with the aid of our friend the semi-colon ought to be expected at this stage of the game.

Also, I was chastised for "overwriting."

What the fuck is overwriting? That's like berating the pizza delivery guy because your pizza got there too early. "Hey man, what the hell are you doing here so quick? I barely had time to finish burying the dead hooker out back! You got a serious problem with overdelivering, and I don't tip for that shit."

This post was originally conceived as an earnest attempt at extolling the virtues of Skippy. Honey Roasted Super Chunk in particular, though when it comes to peanut butter our apartment provides a lavish smorgasbord of decadent delights for even the most discerning palate. No lie, we've got no less than five opened containers in the kitchen, and a freshly discarded one in the bin. Other students amass enough cold pizza and half-empty cartons of dubious Chinese food to feed a small army; we hoard nut butter.

Unfortunately I've got two case briefs to prepare and another couple of chapters to burn through in order to get abreast of the class discussion regarding Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. That, and another fifty-plus characters to memorize for a kanji quiz on Thursday. Good times.

Had to start a local neighborhood blog for one of my courses, check it out if you're bored and have an unquenchable thirst for information about the San Francisco peninsula.

Hey, so I trekked into town to get a comprehensive blood test done today. Doctor thinks I might have hepatitis A. That or liver failure.

Good times.

On the upside, going to a barbecue with my roommate tomorrow. Also, made a really kickin' sandwich today. Toaster ovens are ridiculously under-appreciated in modern culture.

Ho hum.

Rocked the house with my classroom court presentation today, arguing the merits of prior restraint cases when dealing with threats of imminent danger to human life. Feelin' pretty good 'bout my grade, and it's 15% of the class so when it comes to Comm. Law my knickers are feeling warm, comfy and fresh-out-of-the-dryer toasty.

Unfortunately, I totally bombed my kanji test which only served to immediately return said knickers to their hideously twisted state. Gonna relearn the Japanese writing system this weekend, plus another 50+ characters. I'm actually kinda happy about that; with no classes Friday to Sunday are the loneliest days of the week for me. Hopefully I'll meet some interesting people soon; clubs start up next week, and my roommate was cool enough to invite me to a barbeque on Sunday. I have no doubt sumptuous heaps of hot dogs, hamburgers and (hopefully) attractive and interesting women will be available. My roomie's Japanese, and you know what they say about Asian women and tall white guys.

They buy platform shoes? I'm sleepy, fuck off.

Also, my grandmother (who's in her mid-90's) while wandering around the house delirious early yesterday morning managed to fall and break her neck. She then promptly got back up and wandered in to my uncle's bedroom to complain of soreness. Apparently she fractured some vertebrae, and she went through surgery today to fuse something important to something even more important to keep something vitally important from being severed. I guess she's been kept paralyzed and unconscious after the surgery, and they're hoping they can wake her up tomorrow. She'll probably stick around for a little while longer, but I doubt she'll ever leave the hospital.

Cranked the page down to one post at a time for comfortable reading, don't forget to check out what came before.

1711 Holloway Avenue.
San Francisco, CA 94132.

Life is good.

Well, life is pretty much the same. I spent the last month or two champing at the bit to get up here and get started, and now here I am and class is in session. I'd like to relate some sort of jarring epiphany heralding my touchdown at SFO, but so far all I've got to show for my trouble are sore feet and an empty bank account. I hold out hope for a life-changing revelation to strike me in the street; I'll let you know how that goes.

Still trying to develop an engaging style; my roommates both left for the weekend, so left to my own devices I've been idly researching job opportunities in the Bay Area. Turns out I made the right choice in moving here, but it would be premature to mention anything more. Coincidentally I've spent some time becoming familiar with the state of New Games Journalism and how it relates to the media at large. This article is a bit dated but has served as an intriguing starting point, and I encourage you to poke around and take a look at anything that interests you. Racism, politics and religion are aspects of innate human perversity, and we invariably impress them on any medium we get our hands on.

Haven't had much in the way of notable photo opportunities, but here's some highlights:



A cozy little two-story across the street from campus, replete with complimentary shrubbery. Truly, we are as princes among men.



The theater building from our dining room table. How close are we to campus? Too motherfuckin' close.



Found these on display at the campus convenience store. Squid jerky is delicious.

I just spent an hour fiddling with JavaScript, and I need a break from digital media. More later!

That's the only picture I have of Jackie with her mouth closed. Just sayin'.

My camera died (permanently) about five minutes into the ceremony, so all the interesting pictures come courtesy of Verizon Wireless. Take it up with them.

Updates only seem to come when I’m at work bored out of my skull; this is a positive sign for neither my employment nor my dedication to personal journalism.

Had a great time at Jackie’s wedding. Had a horrible time getting there and back; Sonora is the kind of place you want to retire when you’re old, because it’s incredibly beautiful and so mind-fuckingly difficult to get around in that you never want to go anywhere more than a mile from home. I got lost both arriving and leaving, and received a traffic ticket from the only highway officer I’ve ever met (and I’ve met more than a few) who managed to be both demeaning, derogatory and downright dickish in the span of a few sentences. I confess, he may have been naturally talented; that kind of inbred discourtesy cannot be learned. He was like an autistic asshole savant, the Dustin Hoffman of fucktards.

I might have been less than courteous.

I was all riled up to spin fanciful discourses regarding social conundrums vis-à-vis the human maturation process, but I find that committing that bit of hate-filled slander to record has been remarkably calming. Don’t worry; when it comes to criticism, I always persevere.

Jackie’s wedding was a ridiculous and depressingly mundane experience, and I loved every goddamn minute of it. I arrived late and was immediately recruited into a sort of improptu volunteer workforce, an informal extension of the wedding party that in action resembled a surly Southern chain-gang more than anything else. We spent a few hours dragging the reception area into some semblance of order (under the hawk-like gaze of the blushing bride) and retired to a cramped and stuffy home a few blocks away to lick our wounds and prepare for the coming festivities. Sonora has a booming hospitality business (due in large part to the fact that if you manage to find the place, chances are you won’t be in any hurry to face the highway clusterfuck that leaving entails); thus I was forced to bed down in a tiny two bed one bath with seven other people, five of them female. The events of that balmy August evening were fairly mundane, and the night passed in a blur (though I distinctly remember vowing to chase down one of the resident canines, at one point doggedly exclaiming that I would “skin that motherfucker and wear it like a hat.”)

The next morning brought a renewed frenzy of activity, and after ransacking Jackie’s supply of sterilized poultry embryos we returned to ground zero and haphazardly threw the last bits of pomp and circumstance together. I ran back to the house to shower and groom myself to a level concomitant to my respect for this most sacred of ceremonies; arriving at the wedding site fifteen minutes early, we then proceeded to wait twenty minutes for a few straggling yokels to arrive decked out in shorts, flip-flops and weathered purple polo shirts. The wedding began only five minutes behind schedule, which I’m told is roughly equivalent to a man parting the Reed Sea in terms of modern miracles. The ceremony itself was wonderfully short, and with all the unimportant filler excised it lasted less than fifteen minutes.

The reception went swimmingly; good food and better company made for an enjoyable evening that demands more detail than I can afford to give at the moment. Office clock proclaims it’s time for lunch; I’ll see if I can post pictures and a less jumbled narrative later.

So I just found out the Internet is more robust than even I had imagined.

Grab your address bar by its wily stamen, and type in the title of your objective with no restraint. For example, fill that void with "San Francisco State University." Go ahead, try it.

I'll wait.

Isn't that badass? Anyway.

Saw this.





Awesome concepts and scenes soured by lame dialogue.

Just curious to see if I can post from work.

Hmmm.

To be honest, I don’t have anything to write about. I’ve got a biodiesel column to write, but I imagine I can take care of it tomorrow; I’m still waiting to hear back from the source for a possible interview.

I remain firmly in a state of mild shock that the barrier to entry in this industry is so flimsy; I edit copy from contributing writers that bears all the distinguishing hallmarks of a middle school student essay. These people get published; perhaps not in a first-rate periodical, but they get published. The relevation that I am essentially capable of penning a piece and peddling it to publishers in exchange for legal tender has slowly dawned upon me in the last week or so.
EDIT: One of the editors just came by to double-check the spelling of my surname, then inked it in on the proofs I compiled. This equates to awesome.

Anyway. I guess this is sort of a bittersweet epiphany; while the revelation of my sudden viability is empowering, it means the bar I had so recently begun sprinting towards is set depressingly low. No worries; just means I’ll have to try out a few of the more innovative aspects of the major when I get San Fran. I suppose I’d better ferret out a proper place to stay; I hear it can get chilly on those foggy September mornings.

Obama wins.

Bitches.

The man's got a face hewn from stone and lips as black as sin; the obvious choice for the leader of the free world.

Can we still call ourselves that?

Frequent spacing gives my passive prose the weight of deliberate and meaningful thought; also, it makes it look bigger.

My internship is awesome; well, actually it kind of sucks, but in a good way. I get to do boring uninteresting tasks all day, but it's preparing me for a career in which such painfully mundane tasks build to occasional crescendoes of mind-bending joy and fulfillment. It's like a stepladder to Heaven built entirely of razor-sharp d4's.

Random segue? Oh yeah, that just happened.

I imagine you think of a d4 as being rather puny, as damage dice go.

You've obviously never stepped on one.

Anyway.

Sooo, I work about 40+ hours over six days out of the week. I make it out to the gym four days a week, averaging about an hour and change each visit. I make multiple shopping trips throughout the average hebdomad* in order to keep my woefully bare pantry in some semblance of repletion. I try to go for at least a 45-minute to an hour walk every day. Twice a week, I bum around in Matt's garage.

I guess what I'm trying to put down is that I'm awfully damn busy, at least as far as young college men on summer furlough are concerned. And yet, here I sit on a Tuesday evening at just past eight, with absolutely nothing to do and no one to do it with. Dusk is settling and the temperature's finally dropped off; I'd love to go out and kick a ball around with "the guyz," watch a crappy movie in shared agony or just go out and "keep it real" for a few hours before I have to retire in time to be up for work tomorrow. Yet, nothing seems to be going on. Logically I can only deduce two valid hypotheses:

1. The majority of my acquaintances are busier than I am.
2. The majority of my acquaintances are doing stuff that doesn't involve me.

I suppose a third possibility might incorporate horrible illnesses, debilitating dismemberment, and a shared consensus in which many were as one in sitting around twiddling their thumbs and writing semi-angsty "blog" posts which occasionally dipped deep in the waters of pedantic hyperbole; still, I find it best to restrain myself from desultory attempts at humor. Thus, having likely joined the unwashed ranks of the socially undesirable like Mitch and Tyler (sorry Mitch and Tyler, but I figure the chances of you reading this are rather slim. If so, hey! We're losers together! Let's hang out sometime. Shower first.) I feel an ever more pressing urge to get away from this area; it's almost depressing, to savor the essence of this same foolish ignorance and willful folly welling up when I so often lambasted friends, family members and lovers intoxicated by its fragrance. I won't say I was wrong in my prior judgments, only that my actions now are purposefully perpendicular to the route my feet once walked.

I was going to end that paragraph with some adriot and didactic line about the soles of my feet catching the briefest whiff of wanderlust, etc. etc.

Unfortunately, the sheer overweening ego of the sentence was too great for the structure to maintain (grammatically correct though it was,) causing the entire thing to collapse into the endless void between paragraphs.

Thirty-two vowels, ninety-three consonants and one brave period lost their lives in the tragic aftermath.

Never again.




*Fuck yeah it's a word. Look it up.

A recent email:

Dear Alexander Wawro:

San Francisco State wants you to know important facts that pertain to your life as an SF State student. For information about the following topics, please refer to the web sites.

Blah blah blah boring financial aid, graduation and registration information ad nauseum.

A printed copy of this information is available on request from the Registrar's Office.

Best wishes for a successful semester at San Francisco State.

BWAHAHAHA.

This is gonna be ridiculous awesome.

A recent headline from the campus paper:

"Students join longshoremen to voice dissent on May Day"

Longshoremen! They have longshoremen up there! I've never even seen a longshoreman!

Also, you cannot delete an account on Facebook. I know, I've tried; it's simply impossible.

It's come to my attention that as a writer, I'm actually a bit shit. Given the circumstances, this could prove to be a bit of a persnickety wicket.

Why is it everyone from the 80's loves Boston so much?

I don't get it.

More Than A Feeling is really the only crutch you have to stand on here.

I have so much more pointless rambling to disgorge; that's why I'm gonna go grab some coffee instead.

'Evening.

I wish I had something electrifying to post, a post-modern smorgasbord of forbidden delights which you might devour at your leisure in a vivaciously vicarious manner.

But I've gotta get over to the gym, shower and cook lunch before I run down to Anaheim to hit on attractive women. C'est la vie.

So, I find I'm really developing an addiction to hazelnut. Seriously. I put hazelnut coffee sweetener in my tea, in my oatmeal, in yogurt...shit, even in my coffee. It's getting out of hand. And Nutella? Best not even to discuss the delicious horror that Italy has unleashed upon the world.

I joined Jasmine and her father at Rutabegorz for a mid-afternoon snack today (as I am wont to do) and went hogwild by ordering a salad. We picked up a svelte side of thai ginger peanut dip as well, and things went downhill from there. Peanut butter makes everything more delicious, and in an effort to prove this point I dunked a complimentary lemon wedge in the delectable dip and took a bite. Turns out, lemon wedge + peanut butter = mouthgasm. So, of course, I dipped everyone else's complimentary lemon wedge in the concoction and proceeded to thoroughly enjoy myself. There was no stopping my rampant deviance; I moved on to fishing hunks of broccoli and cauliflower out of my salad and coating them in the forbidden fruit, before finally giving in to my perverse cravings and topping what remained of my forlorn spinach salad with an unholy mixture of balsamic vinegar and French's yellow mustard.

It was delicious.

I tipped our waitress extra; she wasn't so hot with the service, but no mortal should be forced to witness such gastronomic heresy uncompensated.

Shh...

It's coming...

Don't look! You'll jinx it...

I want mountains.

God, I want them so bad. And towering forests, deep and inviting canyons carved by powerful rivers, rivers that seem to be only a trickle from far away yet are strong enough to rip you from the world entirely.

Frustration defines me, hems me in and contains all the nervous energy that might otherwise be in danger of spilling forth into something noteworthy. Every time I catch a glimpse of the mountains in the distance, an intangible piece of me bounds forth into being; for brief moments, I know where I am, and where I need to be. Then the light changes, the truck in front of me pulls forward and I'm lost again. I work, I drive, I study and I try to find solace in other people but all the while the I in the equation is frustrated because no matter how long he stares up at those cobalt peaks, they refuse to become real.

I've climbed those mountains, wandered through their forests and slipped in their streams. The reality is always less than the imagined, weaker perhaps because of my own presence in the portrait. No longer a landscape, this lonely tableau of a wanderer in the woods loses something in it's ability to be defined.

Is this your God? That urge, that need, that indescribable something that fills you in an instant and departs before it began? How can you stand it?

How could someone embrace this frustration, an elusive and indescribable piece of yourself flitting about? It taps me on the right shoulder then darts about to perch on my left; by the time I've looked around, it's gone again, and only in hindsight do I realize the enormity of my mistake. When I sit by a woodland stream, I see an ecosystem; hiking a mountain trail, I see bike treads. Sailing on the open ocean, I can't smell the sea for the Subway wrappers; defining what I am, I make black jokes.

I couldn't keep up with art, because the paper never looked like what I saw. I gave up on music, because the melody could never compare to the music I heard. Even now, I have to force my fingers; what I have written is nothing compared to what I have thought, in the moments between breaths. I am part of something I cannot define, and it is beautiful. Achingly, maddeningly beautiful. Turning away in frustration, losing myself in humor and cynicism is preferable to that perpetual anguish.

One day, I'll find what I'm looking for. Will that be Heaven?

So I wrote a big long pedantic entry about my chance encounter with a friendly librarian from Ohio months ago at Heathrow International.

Then I deleted it, both for the sake of brevity and because it was silly.

I never got her name, but I knew before she told me that she worked at a children's school (as a librarian, apparently) and that she walked to work on crisp spring mornings. She was part of a group of educators traveling to Morocco for a teaching summit, and we had absolutely nothing in common. For some reason the cafe seated me at her table as she was finishing her meal (some kind of salad, I think?) despite the fact that we were total strangers and there were empty tables available.
We made small talk, I tried to be polite and then I pulled out a book in an attempt to avoid intruding on her meal. I don't really remember much after that; but I can clearly remember her face, the comfortable dress she was wearing (deep red with a golden trim) and the fact that nothing remarkable occurred. It was not awkward nor invigorating, neither uncomfortable nor gratifying. It was pleasant and empty, like a hollow chocolate bunny or a warm cup of herbal tea.

I don't know why I felt the urge to write about it, and I'm not sure why I continue to recall the encounter despite it's utter lack of any defining moment. What I am sure of is that this is neither the first nor the last time I'll think back to that afternoon in London; I know that pleasant librarian (pretty in a plain sort of way) will follow me forever, and I unabashedly welcome it. I'll never see her again, but her bare footsteps will never cease, rustling softly amidst the crisp sounds of every spring morning.

Also, that salad and tea ended up costing me more than twenty bucks American.

Goddamn euro.

Mmm...cabbage.

Wish I had something interesting to write about. Spring break is incredibly boring; I've got a bunch of work I need to get done, and sitting around studiously avoiding it isn't helping. Mebbe I'll go out and slice n' dice the hedge after lunch, we'll see...

Last night ended alright, I guess. I didn't achieve my goal of experiencing an alcohol-infused night of debauchery, but I guess it's hard to feel bad about not consuming copious amounts of rotgut.

Reminded again that I am not manly. Beer tastes like crap, and if the water sources of Medieval Europe hadn't been contaminated by the accumulated offal of a civilization essentially shitting in their own tap water, I guarantee it would never have risen to prominence as the beverage of choice.

Yes, I know about the Egyptians and the nutritive properties, etc. The stuff's mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Doesn't mean it tastes any better.

Also, a note concerning forethought. Should you plan to embark on an evening about town and the recreational imbibing of libations is your goal, do your companions the favor of bringing your goddamn I.D. The 350-pound doorman isn't going to be swayed by your Grizzly Adams beard and fond recollections of life in the 80's, no matter how hard you sell it.

Garrett was supposed to hit me up for lunch at Ye Olde Ship, but it's gettin' on towards two and I imagine he only woke up an hour or so ago. Screw it, I'm hungry and there's salmon in the fridge.

Ramblin' post is ramblin'.

Stuff white people like.

It's a beautiful thing.

Too late to blather on now, more tomorrow.

Homework at five in the morning.

Sleep still elusive
But this junzi treatise keeps
oh so tired eyes wide

lolz.

lolz.

Bad grammar FTW.

100 posts!

I can has kitten sandwich naow?



Things I want to do before I die:

Learn to cook. Better.
Learn to play an acoustic guitar.
Get a pilot's license.
Get a motorcycle license. Pop a wheelie.
Renew my CPR certification and licensing.
Shave my head.
Skydive.
Bungee jump.
Eat nothing but candy for a whole day.
Watch Seven Years in Tibet.
Go to Tibet.
Travel to Japan.
Visit Australia.
See Ireland.
Learn how a car works.
Break a bone doing something stupid.
Learn to tell good stories.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Class in seven hours, sleep now.

Health tips for a happier life.

Q: I've heard that cardiovascular exercise can prolong life; is this true?
A: Your heart is only good for so many beats, and that's it.. don't waste them on exercise. Everything wears out eventually. Speeding up your heart will not make you live longer; that's like saying you can extend the life of your car by driving it faster. Want to live longer? Take a nap.


Q: Should I cut down on meat and eat more fruits and vegetables?
A: You must grasp logistical efficiencies. What does a cow eat? Hay and corn. And what are these? Vegetables. So a steak is nothing more than an efficient mechanism of delivering vegetables to your system. Need grain? Eat chicken. Beef is also a good source of field grass (green leafy vegetable). And a pork chop can give you 100% of your recommended daily allowance of vegetable products.


Q: Should I reduce my alcohol intake?
A: No, not at all. Wine is made from fruit. Brandy is distilled wine, that means they take the water out of the fruity bit so you get even more of the goodness that way. Beer is also made out of grain. Bottoms up.


Q: How can I calculate my body/fat ratio?
A: Well, if you have a body and you have fat, your ratio is one to one. If you have two bodies, your ratio is two to one, etc.


Q: What are some of the advantages of participating in a regular exercise program?
A: I can't think of a single one, sorry. My philosophy is: No Pain... Good! So is Eckhart Tolle's by the way.


Q: Aren't fried foods bad for you?
A: Please tell me you've been listening! ... Foods are fried in vegetable oil. In fact, they're permeated in it. How could getting more vegetables be bad for you? Olive oil is good too, another veggie. Whale oil isn't.


Q: Will sit-ups help prevent me from getting a little soft around the middle?
A: Simply put, no, they wont. When you exercise a muscle, it gets bigger. You should only be doing sit-ups if you want a bigger stomach.


Q: Is chocolate bad for me?
A: What is chocolate made out of? Cocoa beans! Beans are a member of the vegetable part of the food pyramid. It's also the best feel-good food around.


Q: Is swimming good for your figure?
A: If swimming is good for your figure, explain whales to me.


Q: Is getting in-shape important for my lifestyle?
A: It depends on your lifestyle. Round is a shape, just make sure you have appropriate doors.

What to write about.

I’m sitting at work, and I should be putting some quality time in on my homework.

Oh well.

Let me just preface this by saying I’m in a good mood. No, really.

Well, actually not so much. Sitting at a desk for a few hours with absolutely nothing to do has definite mood-sapping effects. Maybe I’d better qualify what it is I do first.

I’m trying to write plainly, with little in the way of embellishments; unlike Cadbury eggs and cheap two-dollar hookers, it turns out that when composing languid prose one can in fact have too much of a good thing.

I work as an admitting clerk at the reception desk of a (relatively) local hospital, which means I sit behind a badly scratched desk (highlighted in the bastard tones of the horrid lovechild of aquamarine and blue #4) in a garish pink swivel chair all day and direct visitors while keeping an eye peeled to ensure nothing dodgy occurs on the premises. I also work the hospital switchboard, and those two entrancing tasks fill out the receptionist portion of my paycheck. Since whomever has their warm tush planted firmly in that uncomfortably salmon-esque piece of Swedish-born plastic is also considered to be the entire admitting department, I’m the faceless drone who takes care of all the boring paperwork generated whenever a new patient is admitted. This is the only portion of my job that entails real work, and invariably leads to about an hour or so’s worth of mindless paper-shuffling whenever a new guest chooses to grace us with their presence. Weekends are fairly slow, which means as the de facto weekend shift guy I often get paid twelve-fifty an hour to sit around and amuse myself.

Pretty sweet gig.

Back to the mood thing. I felt it was necessary to state that because really, why else would I take the time to pen such a laborious piece of copy (essentially to myself) than to commiserate a sad state of affairs? The communal nature of interactive media seems custom-tailored to anonymous wanking; one need look no further than my outdated and disconsolate livejournal friends list for proof.

Wow. I was just gonna write a sentence or two as a bit of a rambling precursor, and I’m already up to over a page. Epic fail.

Fuck it. I was looking at the CSU’s International Program, and if I’m lucky enough to get in and meet the qualifications for studying abroad I’m gonna go for it. The only downside is that the only place I really had my heart set on was Japan, and they start their semester of exchange in the fall (September, to be exact.) Nothing troubling about that, until I point out that they require you to be an enrolled CSU student the fall semester preceding the semester of departure. For those of you unaware of how a basic college semester system works, that means that if I attended one of the CSU's next fall I would be unable to take part in the program until the following year. That puts me (ideally) in my last year of college. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it means I’d have to wait over a year when I really want to get going now. Things could change in eighteen months, I could lose the courage to take this opportunity or just change my mind altogether. Still, I’m gonna try for it. I’m hoping to attend San Francisco State in the fall anyway, and that ought to be enough of a scenery change for one year.

I keep getting these backhanded remarks from friends about why I want to leave. I know the chances of having enough readers to require the use of both hands to keep track (more than five, for all the amputees out there) are fairly slim, but while I can’t count on this being a high-traffic site I can reliably predict that everyone who allows these words to burn their way into the tender bits of their hippocampus might have at one time counted themselves among my close associates. That uncomfortable and unwieldy bit of prose out of the way, I feel I can confidently address the reader directly: I want to leave because of you.

No, seriouslyforrealz hear me out kthx. I’ll undoubtedly get shit for posting that, so let’s at least try to make sure it’s the proper vintage of fecal matter before we go wantonly hurling it about like chimps at a hoedown.

You’re great. No, really. We’ve had a great run; I’ve certainly enjoyed our time together, and I’ll always treasure the memories. The problem isn’t you.

It’s me.

Grandiose posturing and sly Dear John references aside, I just don’t enjoy myself very much around the majority of my friends anymore. To be honest this is to be expected; I count my circle of “friends” as being as large as fifteen to thirty people at times, yet the majority of those fine folks were introduced to me as friends of others whom I was acquainted with. Like ships passing in the night, we saw each other often yet never truly gained the measure of one another. As I’ve gotten older, it’s become less and less important to have my presence be enjoyed or even desired by these people, and so my efforts to pander to their sensibilities have slackened. In doing so, I’ve simply made the differences in our own personal tastes more apparent.

Wow, that’s a weighty bit of bullshit. I keep taking these little paragraph breaks to remind myself to (metaphorically speaking) take a breath and move on.

What I wrote above is certainly far from blanket truth. There are a number of people whose company I honestly enjoy, and I often feel guilty that I bring the mood down or don’t entertain like I used to; irregardless, even these fine souls don’t mean much in the long run because the majority are never interested in actually doing anything. My mother often bemoans my complaints of inaction, unable to grasp how a group of physically fit young college students with all their functional appendages intact can manage to find absolutely nothing to do on a weekday evening. It’s gotten harder and harder to find excuses to justify our inaction over the years, and finally I’ve just stopped trying to bullshit her. It’s because the majority of my peer base are losers. And if most of my friends are losers, what does that say about me?

C’mon, honestly. We don’t need to drink to enjoy ourselves. We don’t need to smoke copious quantities of quasi-medicinal herbs to enjoy ourselves. We don’t even need a roof over our heads to enjoy ourselves, and we sure as fuck don’t need money. All that is required is the desire to experience the world around us and the brazen, beautiful foolishness to act on those desires.

I’m rambling again. The point is, the reason I want so badly to do well this semester and travel somewhere else for schooling is two-fold:

I want to start accomplishing something meaningful. I’m 22, and I ought to start acting like it.

I want to enjoy life again, and at this point for me that apparently entails attempting a diverse amount of interesting activities.

I’m not the type to deny my subconscious what it wants, and I’m tired of trying to motivate my peers to do anything outside of their comfort zone. It seems the more and more insistent I’ve become, the less and less my presence is desired by these people. It might just be my imagination, but such a phenomenon would be absolutely understandable if true. I know I haven’t been much fun to hang around with these last six months or so, and I’m not sure I’d invite myself to most gatherings. All the more reason for me to broaden my circle of acquaintances and get the hell out of this town, really. I love California, and I adore Fullerton; that being said, I don’t want to spend the rest of my days here.

Whoa. I’ve got a metric crapton more I wanted to set down, but I think two pages single-spaced is pushing it. Plus, I get to go home in like, ten minutes. Not a bad way to kill an hour.

I’m growing weary of trying to excuse myself, but I think this is important enough to tack on: if you feel the above doesn’t apply to you, then it probably doesn’t. If you’re not sure, well then it still probably doesn’t, but only because I’m so awesome. If you think I am writing about you, and are (justifiably) irritated or confused, feel free to boldly bring it up the next time we hang out. That’ll be in like what, a week and a half? Try not to forget.

Gotta send out my transcripts tomorrow.

Guess I'd better pay taxes, too.

Yeah, still in a good mood.

EDIT: I just realized I printed out the Pimp rulesheet, then left it on the printer at work. That's gonna be interesting to explain...






OH HOH HOH HOH!

Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve all-nighter FTW!

Also, peppermint schnapps = A refreshing sucker punch to the face from Santa Claus himself.

Witty =/= me. C'est la vie.