Solemn

One creates art alone as one dies alone.

This did not end up sounding as poignant as it did in my mind.

Tennessee Tenure

Sometimes it's pretty awesome to get away from everyone and live a separate life. I feel fortunate to have the ability to enact this fantasy. Staying with Sadie and family gives me a bit of relief I sometimes feel I need. Thanks for your hospitality, y'all. <3

Patterns in the Fog

Life is nothing more than a series of repetitive gestures, altered ever so slightly each time they are performed. To live is to be destined to reprisal. Perhaps, therein lies the purpose of life, a steady stream of practiced movements, calculated and executed millions of times until perfection is borne of trial and error. Perhaps we are the infinite monkeys, and our bodies are the infinite typewriters. Perhaps once perfection has been reached in all pertinent categories we shall be exposed to the true form and purpose of the universe and existence. Perhaps by this point we will already know.

Driving, Delaying, Deciding

Driving for 4 1/2 hours non-stop is taxing. It makes you bored, irritable, prone to accidents and most importantly, prone to thoughts. However, since my trek to Philly was made last night, those thoughts are but severed synaptic connections drowned in the sea of plasticity that is the (my) human brain. I can't for the life of me remember thinking of anything interesting, besides telling Sadie to create a photo manipulation consisting of a mugshot pasted onto a fantasy style background. Fuck, I can't find a good fantasy background. I suck at life. I want a Rat-Thing.

Goddamn Life

It's irritating when things don't work out how you planned they would. I wanted to be with Sadie for the whole week but things such as "obligations" have obstructed my path to her southern abode. Here's hoping the client site gets railed by an icy comet shot from Orion's arrow.

Fallout 3

I am tempted to start a series of blogs where I take on the world from a Wastelander's point of view because dammit, the game deserves such a fan service. Maybe I'll tackle the story of Abraham Washington. It's immaculately crafted and gives you the feeling of such power over your environs and the people you meet and influence. Just gotta watch out for those damnable Radscorpions.

Occultism

I love how occultism gives you the feeling that as you go deeper and deeper you are getting closer to some profound truth when in reality you are chasing your own tail.

If I were musically inclined...

Song titles I would consider:

• Ya'll Want a Ham
• Basket of Brisket
• Chuck Fieldy's Rib Basket
• Sam Flanders and the Immaculate Gravy
• Samson and the Bandito
• Provincial Flamingo
• The Saddlebags of Sin
• Wharton Crest
• The Souffle of Pain
• The Wandering Haberdasher
• Crestfallen
• The Warm Embrace of the Wet Radio
• Cancer Wallaby
• Clambering Crab Babies

I could go on and on, but that's enough for now.

It's a Dry Heat (Part I)

I'll get back to rambling about the distant past in a bit, but I would like to take some time to ramble about the recent past while it is fresh in my mind. I'd like to tell myself all about my vacation in Arizona/Tennessee. I started with a plan. The plan was to take a friend. The friend lived, and still lives around 600 miles away, therefore the trip started with a very long drive. I started by heading west, crossing into West Virginia and Ohio along the way. This part of the drive was old hat to me, as it was the route towards Columbus and the home of the dread scourge Sterling Commerce. However, oh happy day, it was meant that I travel on past the wretched dead-lands in central Ohio and continue ever westward, my heart happy for what lay ahead. I crossed into plains lush with cornfields and cows and the scent of methane, and around this time for whatever reason I received a friendly wave from passers-by, which lifted my spirits and helped me buckle down for the long haul through Kentucky. I passed through Cincinnati and Louisville along the way, both of which featured many police cars along curbsides writing tickets to drivers likely writhing in rage and wallowing in their own stupidity and carelessness. I think, at least from a driver's viewpoint, that Cincinnati would be a habitable city. It looks clean and modern and is a place I may stop to visit one day. Louisville was much less charming. It felt like generic-city USA and is probably a place you have to explore a bit to get a real feel for it. Aside from these minor distractions, there was distressingly little to keep my interest while zooming down the highway. A smashed deer here, an orphaned tire tread there. I became complacent and ever bored with the road and longed for some sort of communication, even if it was that of an angry motorist. I persevered, however, and reached my friend's home in Tennessee where we spent some quality time in a hotel room and where we learned a little more about each other.

I am terrible at this... (Part II)

Now, I mentioned a vacation. Unfortunately, it ended up being book ended by the worst week in my life, so I almost hesitate to assign this moniker but seeing as it did not CAUSE the aforementioned event, I leave it as thus. The vacation started innocuously enough with my buddy Jared heading south to my place from his dorm in Slippery Rock. We had agreed this was for the best as it would have been insane to first go NORTH then retrace the path of our journey, so we loaded up my car with the essentials (tunes, foods that caused rot-gut, our navigation oracle Garmin, a wry sense of humor, etc.) and southbound we went. We trekked through quite a few states on the way down including West Virginia, Virginia, and North and South Carolina before reaching our destination. It was during this long and arduous journey that I learned of The Hold Steady and a little more about Jared and his life since high school. Our trip was frightfully uneventful and mostly carried out during the black of night/early morning and consisted of many encounters with construction barrels, workers and equipment, though all passed by my vehicle unscathed. We arrived in the Peach State at approximately 7AM, pestered Jason for his house key, and felt our way to his place through the early morning swamp haze. We busted in, bags in tow, dumped our stuff in his living room, and passed the fuck out.

The first day consisted of frolicking merrily in the warm Atlantic waters located about 10 miles from Jason's place, due east. It was here we spent the majority of the day, riding the cresting waves and catching up on lost time. We even busted out a frisbee, but, after Jared tossed it violently towards an old woman's leg in an attempt to dismember her (in her own words) and recovered it, it soon became lost in some turtle nesting grounds located nearby. Since only pregnant turtles are allowed in these areas, the frisbee was lost until future generations of turtles with thumbs and adequate manual dexterity are born on this beach and able to toss it out of their nests. Shortly afterwards, we headed back to Jason's place for a spell. We loaded up the Wii and played some Mario Kart (at which Jared and I kicked Jason ass soundly) and generally loafed about for a few hours until evening set in. At this point Jason decided we should go out and take in the Savannah night life, and Jared and I agreed that yes, this would be a fun thing to do. So off we went!

I am terrible at this... (Part I)

Well then, I haven't put anything up on this bitch since February! I am a totally disciplined type of guy! Innumerable events have transpired since my last entry, among them the most tragic and most uplifting. I will not soon forget this year. We could start off around... June I suppose. I turned 23 without incident nor celebration, mentioning it offhandedly to Mr. Schubert. Jim got me some sushi from a place on McKnight road where we witnessed one man's bold first attempt to ingest the nautical substance. He had the game on easy mode though, he was just trying eel. This was well and good excepting the fact that I though I had broken Sterling and was kind of stressed out the rest of the night until Skip and I put our heads together and found a way to undo my misdeed. Thank god we did not invoke the rage of Bedard, that was something I was not prepared to deal with. I returned, broke Sterling once more when I botched a request from Rob Myatt and also healed that wound up (mostly) and soon afterwards was placed in a project placement trebuchet aimed squarely at a Dutch company headquartered in an American city, De Lage Landen. Now this, my friends, started out as a complete cluster. Normally when I'm on a project I'm on from the beginning and hold out till the very end. Not so with this one. I was feeling my way around for quite some time, trying to get a handle on the intricate system of nigger-rigged pieces and parts held together by a digital thread so thin a butterfly's sneeze could send the whole damn infrastructure tumbling into a pile of broken dreams and laid-off employees. It was a little rough, as I was planted on the DLL project as well as the Sterling project for a week, so I felt my way through the twisted vines of Dutch IT along with the nagging split ends and skin tags left on the Sterling project since I didn't want to leave Ed and Skip all alone in their misery. Eventually, Sterling healed up somewhat and I finally got a chance to devote my attention to the next headache, getting functional tests out of the brick-house-on-stilts DLL environment. Thankfully, I was spared having to get my hands too messy by a vacation planned a month earlier to visit my good friend Jason down in Savannah, Georgia.

Total Eclipse of the Heart

The last lunar eclipse until 2010 happened today. Upon reflection, 2010 is only 2 years away, but still, I'm glad I got to catch a few glimpses of it before it dissipated into the annals. We spoke more of Danik the Dashboard genie and his kooky antics today during dinner at the Thai Orchid. I had forgotten how good the food was and it pleasantly suprised me when the cashew chicken I ordered had a bite not soon forgotten. There are a lot of events which transpired within the previous weeks; most importantly Michelle being in and out of jail. Matt and I went to visit her last weekend and plan to do the same this weekend, time and weather permitting. The whole situation has me thinking about the choices I've made in my life and made me ponder to what lengths I would go to to help friends or family in dire need. I'm glad my grandparents had the economic means to bail her out and help her get her life turned around, but in the end the decision is hers. Unfortunately, she is a chronic bad-decision maker, so it is unknown if this time will make a difference or not. If it doesn't I'm doubtful there's anything more that can be done for her, she will dig her own grave. Sorry for the somewhat somber tone of this post, me, but these are thoughts and feelings I will be glad to have off my chest. I've begun reading "Deus Irae" and it's interesting to me for many reasons. I've been on a novel hiatus, and moreso a PKD hiatus, so jumping back into his bizarre mindset and writing style was jarring, to say the least. It didn't take long for me to recognize the classic PKD structure and hunker down for a good read, so I got to it. The story involves a quadrapalegic man named Tibor McMasters, sent by the church of the god of wrath to find the god himself, in human form, view his true face, and paint a mural for the church. It's got the post-apocalyptic atmosphere, the mutant freaks inhabiting the post-war landscape and their ritualistic ways, and a character who questions the very nature of reality, very standard for PKD. I plan on finishing within the month so I can send it back to Mr. Negley at some point before he moves to Jersey. Well, I think I'm done typing, so goodbye, sweet internet, goodbye.

Blogbekizstan (or the uneventful weekend)

Hi there self! since I'm the only one that reads this anyhow, I guess I'm the only one who needs to be addressed on here! I honestly am not sure if there are any noteworthy things to report on today. The weekend's over and unfortunately it wasn't that eventful. Went with Matt and Nubs to Adam's place on Friday night and drank some.

While there we discussed the merits of a German heritage which my brother is apparently vehemently supportive of. Personally, heritage means as much to me as Tom Cruise's (much needed) vasectomy so naturally I feigned interest and continued to drink. I had a little bit of everything and was full to bursting by the end of the night, at which point i laid down on the couch and slept the rest of the night away. The buffalo chicken pizza was pretty tight though, I enjoyed it though it started to get challenging to put it away towards the end of the night. We woke up around 10 and hung at Adam's place for a few hours while Matt insisted he buy some ammo for his AK47 so we could go "somewhere" and shoot some stuff up. This, however did not happen Saturday and instead we spent our time hanging out at the apartment.

Dom ended up messaging me and proclaiming his boredom, from which he wanted relief. I offered to be his life preserver and brought him over to hang out for a bit. Amanda showed up after a while and we went to Max and Erma's. This was an interesting bit in the mostly dull weekend, for we had a 20 minute wait and Matt and Nubs made it a point to be as loud and vulgar as they could while surrounded by children. Nubs was just about ready to break the gumball machine in the foyer to pieces to grab the $20 bills hidden in it when we were called to our seats. Once there, Nubs acted like a complete ass and Dom was denied a drink for a defaced ID. I got a Sangaria, and downed it with gusto. For most of our stay, most of my friends were talking shit on the waiter, which I felt was completely unfounded. Sure, he denied Dom a drink, but really didn't do anything deserving of mention. It did take an unusually long time to get our food, but once we got it I was swamped with goodness. They have a really amazing steak salad and I plan on ordering it again in the future. Alas, the trip to the VFW with Derek and Michallynn did not come through as her uncle was pulled from life support earlier in the day, but I still managed to salvage the day.

I took Matt to an interview he didn't have at McDonald's. For all the bitching managers apparently do about the lack of crew people, they don't seem eager to hire Matt. Since that didn't happen, we moseyed on over to Wal-mart and I picked up some essential rations, namely donuts, pretzels, and cereal, not to mention a ham and cheese loaf. Delicious. I reformatted Matt's computer, dropped him off, and realized the fucker didn't have an Ethernet port driver installed... lovely. I gave up on it, telling him to hold out 'till Monday, at which I plan on fixing it for him. The night was rounded out by watching a few episodes of Scrubs, followed by a short Derek rant on Nubs and his personality, and a cordial goodnight. Considering I have some work to do tomorrow, I best be off to bed. Goodnight to all you lovely, lovely person.

New Lappy!

Well well well interbag scum! I'm posting from my brand new laptop and I must say it's the bee's knees, the cat's meow, the dragon's fire et. al. What makes me say this, you ask? Well, we could always ask my friend Crysis over here why I feel this way... come on over you shallow but beautiful whore of a game!

[pictures go here... someday.]

So yeah, new lappy makes me happy. I'm also getting better at snowboarding, and I'm realizing to be good you have to make your legs burn. It takes a lot of effort to effectively carve through the snow and though it feels good when you finally learn how, your legs will be red with anger at you. I am in Columbus again this week, after serving a brief tour last week for 3 days, and let me tell you it's more futile than ever. Nick didn't even say hi, not that I care since that would just impede my flow, but still, dang. At least Sherri greeted me.

There will be drinking and festivities this weekend, courtesy of... something. Whoever is sponsoring this wonderful event certainly gets props from me, especially if I win the $500 prize. If that were the case, I would even consider giving it away!

So lets think back on last year, since I haven't posted anything here since then. I don't think I've changed a lick since then, and unhappily feel like I may be regressing. Oh well, that's what happens when you feel like just gliding along with the current. At least nothing upsets me too much, and my blood pressure is assuredly much lower than Derek's! I think I will buy a six pack some time this week, maybe Wednesday night, to celebrate... something. The internet tells me drinking is good for my heart, and I don't have any qualms with that!

Fucking OKCupid, most useless site ever, I'm too much of a creepy person to receive messages back from anyone I send them to apparently. It's irritating. At least I don't need a relationship to function normally, unlike a lot of others. That kinda shit will put you in an early grave right quick unless you find the right person.

Why is it always when I want to do something something else I want to do pops up for doing at the exact same time? Take for example the "Wii Party" Angela is throwing. That sounds like fun, though it makes me wonder in what state her house will be after all the drunken Wii playing debauchery.

Ok bloggington, it's nearly 10PM and that means I've been up for a very long time (not counting the 3 hour nap I got before the drive) so it's time for bed. Night night interwebs.