Ladies and Gentlemen:

The film I submitted to the Grinnell Film festival (to which a link can be found several posts below this one) has had the honor of winning the worst film of the 2005 festival. My existence is complete.

Why am I only inspired at ungodly hours in the morning? Ah, well. I’ve got another poem up. And on that note, y’all should be aware of this particular Onion article:

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National Poetry Month Raises Awareness Of Poetry Prevention

NEW YORK—This month marks the 10th National Poetry Month, a campaign created in 1996 to raise public awareness of the growing problem of poetry. "We must stop this scourge before more lives are exposed to poetry," said Dr. John Nieman of the American Poetry Prevention Society at a Monday fundraising luncheon. "It doesn't just affect women. Young people, particularly morose high-school and college students, are very susceptible to this terrible affliction. It is imperative that we eradicate poetry now, before more rainy afternoons are lost to it." Nieman said some early signs of poetry infection include increased self-absorption and tea consumption.

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That bit about inspiration reminds me of a rule I’m formulated: in situations where people are awake, then the closer it is to four in the morning, the more likely it is that something important is happening. Kind of an odd trend, possibly related to 4 AM being the least likely hour for people to be awake. I suspect ScavHunt will be the next great demonstration of this principle.

There comes a time when a man must cease worrying about any potentially difficult decisions he will potentially make at some point, and enjoy the simple things in life, such things as 200+ metal microfilm reels, or a bulky old PA system that rquires 8-ohm speakers…

Yes indeed, there was more dumpster diving yesterday, this time with the end result of several people in our house having better chairs than the standard wooden college desk chairs. Shu looks even creepier than usual now that he has a big high-backed leather chair to sit in. I grabbed a large box of microfilm wheel, just in case I need 200 or so metal reels at some point. And Zach took the library’s old PA system, which could apparently be used effectively as an amp if we got a microphone and some big speakers.

Which, of course, all had to be explained to the prospie, as well as rearranged so he could actually sleep somewhere. However, despite the fact that nothing is actually happening here on Monday nights, we managed to show him a good time. We showed him one of things we have that Yale (his other choice) clearly doesn’t have: Harold’s Chicken Shack. And much delicious fired chicken was eaten by all, and I got a remarkable amount of grease on my shirt with the first bite. Thereafter was a viewing of The Big Lebowski and a game of poker.

And so, in theory, I have work to do. Although I maintain that the things which absolutely must be done are usually the least important things. Ah, well.

God help me, I think I'm a poet. So I might as well put it out there. So I threw together a simple archive and linked it in the madness section. I'll update it whenever seems appropriate. Read and comment to your heart's content. Or don't. See if I care.

And so, in the midst of all this emotional turmoil, I have forgotten to relate the ordinary humdrum surreality of life on a college campus.

About Saturday, Ethan from down the hall opened the door, and with no explanation, deposited in our entryway two copies of the latest issue of Playboy. Later investigation revealed that he had received 100 free copies, and so, apparently, distributed them throughout the entire house. We still haven’t found out why and how he got 100 free copies of Playboy. But now we have two.

Well, I’m out of my idiom again. Of course, I have a particularly slow and dangerous idiom anyway.

I hate backup plans, good advice, and pragmatism. But my enthusiasm for second chances, persistence, and reckless optimism is considerably diminished of late. So it seems to be time for another change. bleh.

All things must pass…
Although it’s interesting, if you can find and compare the George Harrison version of “All Things Must Pass” with the Beatles out-take version (released on Anthology 3). The Harrison solo version has got Phil Spector-produced strings and horns that give it a sweeping impact, and Harrison’s vocals are confident and reassuring. The Beatles version is much more spare and intimate, and Harrison’s voice seems to crack a little from time to time. In this version it sounds more like a man trying to reassure himself. Both are good songs though. I need to get more of Harrison’s solo stuff.

Speaking of music, OurTunes makes it so much easier to explore more unusual branches of music (depending on whether someone actually has it, of course). For example, the plethora of one-hit wonders from the 80’s that I’ve grabbed lately. And just today I’ve found Yes’s Tales from Topographic Oceans, which is known as the ultimate expression of excessive 70’s prog-rock. Not bad so far. Of course, I’m still only in the first track, which is 22 minutes long, and only slightly longer than the other 3 tracks, each of which originally took up an entire LP side.

Well, at least my Onion horoscope is pertinent and reassuring, after a fashion:

“Although you've always worried about dying alone and unloved, you can put your mind at ease: A tragic mix-up at the pheromone lab will lead to your being loved to death by nine separate species.”

Additionally, the last fortune cookie I recieved was "Your talents will be recognized and rewarded" ... in bed. So clearly, I'm in for interesting times. But they do not appear to be the times I initially hoped for.

So (in a peculiar but unrelated echo)

Here goes nothing...

There we go.

http://homepage.mac.com/mmontgomery4/iMovieTheater5.html

'nuff said

Ain’t no change in the weather, ain’t no changes in me… and it dropped about 30 degrees over the course of this morning, so you can see where I’m coming from…

Rational? Rational? Okay, well not the last two, but the third-to-last was a blameless description of bizarre events. I mean, finding a toilet behind the physics building was clearly not a metaphor. And if it was, I don’t want to know.

And besides, I wouldn’t talk about rationality if I were you, Mr. “Fat Anna likes her liquor.”

Alex, you don’t even want to know what I would write if I had celebrated 4/20. I don’t even want to see what I would write if I celebrated 4/20… okay, maybe I do just a little… I mean, it would probably be pretty crazy… but no. I mean, this is already my surrealist phase. And it’s already clearly incoherent, which is why I have to become a Dylan song. Or as Homsar would say, “I’m a sooooong from the Sixties.”

Of course, If I’m really after emulating Dylan, I’m going to have to pick up guitar this summer. And enter more of a folk-surrealist phase… which I could do. Actually, I’m kind of working on it.

And you know, it’s kind of hard to cut down on the oblique references and double meanings once you get started on them. I mean, these things happen… Besides which, now I can explain a period of my life as “Cocaine vs. the Death Star”. How many people can say that? Probably just me – and I may well be the only one who thinks this is worthwhile, but nevertheless… I mean, besides my innate love of cleverness and complexity, I wouldn’t want to make my audience nervous. Although if being compared to the Death Star hasn’t scared her off, I don’t know what will.

But, if only to promote the image of bloggers-as-journalists, I will delve into factual events. I saw two plays today, both written and performed by U of C students. Zach was in one, and was not even playing a drunk. It was called Sweet Time, and it involved a cowboy, gangsters, and an unidentified white powder. It was brilliantly surrealist and rather amusing, although Zach says they had been reading it as a drama. The other play was about a struggling Jewish playwright, written by a Jewish playwright. Rather interesting, not as directly amusing, but pretty good for a new work.

And the power went out for the third time this year yesterday (This building is three years old!), just as I was about to write up a social science memo, so I had to do that in the Reg. But the end result is that I got beaten by a heavily-handicapped puffball. This indirectly reminds me that I probably should say something about the pope. We’ve got a new one, in case anyone missed it. After only three rounds of voting, they chose Ratzinger, who I think should have called himself Pope Ratt I, but will instead be known as Benedict XVI. I suppose it could be worse. I mean, I don’t know how many liberal candidates for pope there were. However, Ratzinger’s track record is not exactly reassuring. I mean, I kind of like Vatican II and all. And I don’t think the church is particularly in danger of moving forward too fast. It did kind of take them 1500 years to stop speaking Latin. Competing views hold that no candidate could have been too conservative, but that’s an argument I’ll have to get back to.

Well, things should get interesting once we get the prospie tomorrow. We plan to pass our RA Jakob off as famous European techno composer SCRÜPHI (that would be “scruffy” for those of you not familiar with his nickname). And the less said about the dead hooker, the better…

See, that was moderately rational. Now I can get back to obtuseness and reference. I have some great material with trucks and windmills that I should post at some point. and of course, closing with a song lyric.

You ain’t seen nothing yet…

So I'm not really sure when this blog just became a place for Pat to vomit his emotions from time to time. As it stands, the current state of the blog is gettin' way too weird for my tastes. This is partly due to the fact that it's impossible to read into the 7-10 layers of thought and double meaning that Pat puts into each post. I mean, if you took what he writes at face value, you'd think that he just copied and pasted some results from a random word generator.

It seems the days of rational blogging have come to an end. I would try to stem the tide of irrational emotions, but I'm far too busy to regularly update this blog. I just thought that I should make some sort of comment after reading the last three posts made me dizzy.

For Pat's sake, let's hope he celebrates 4/20.

If I were a Dylan song, I would be profound. As it is, people just ask what the fuck I’m talking about – even people who really like Dylan songs. I promise I’m not nearly as crazy as I sound, just a little more expressive than is strictly wise.

So, you see, I told you I wrote poetry. Though, rather than clog this blog with poetry, I ought to set up some kind of separate archive for the stuff.

My greatest flaw is that I have two flaws, and I can never tell which one is working. I can be terribly impatient, but then I have a history of waiting too long and missing opportunities. You’d think these would cancel out, but no such luck.

I will assemble, for my own amusement, an elucidating series of quotes:

“Time takes time.” – Ringo Starr
“All things must pass.” – George Harrison
“It’s getting better all the time.” – Paul McCartney
“I am the walrus.” – John Lennon

Alright, not entirely elucidating.

And in actual real events, I didn’t actually do that much today. I did see former Governor Jim Thompson talk about the 9/11 report, which was cool and fairly informative. Although there was that crazy woman in the audience, but she wasn’t too disruptive. Really, she was schizophrenic or something – kind of scary.

Other than that, it was just your average Monday. Although I suppose it would be bad, in conjunction with my previous post, to say that I’ve been in a good mood today…

A quandary: When I am at my most anxiously neurotic is when I am least likely to do something crazy and/or stupid. But when I am feeling particularly comfortable and enthusiastic, then… then I am more than ever likely to do something crazy and/or brilliant and/or stupid. Rational analysis suggests, perhaps, that I ought to work on being less neurotic whilst not doing anything stupid. On the other hand, my particular philosophy of life encourages attempted brilliance. So… well, the real trouble is working out the fine line between brilliant and stupid beforehand. I think it’s a given that anything I do will be crazy, after all.

Ah, well. Though I have no idea what I am doing, I am assured that I know why I’m doing it.

And seeing as I keep self-identifying as a poet, I really ought to start putting some out there. Although the ratio between total poetry and completed, presentable poetry keeps increasing in an alarming fashion. And so, since I’m not in the mood for rational commentary today:

Another Misty Morning
It is another misty morning as I write this
Another grey uncertainty of dawn
Another weary tumble into lightness
That the clouds will not surrender to for long

There is another well-worn circle in my head now
Another quiet journey in the dark
Another wordless mystery my heart bows
Forever aimless firing at no mark.

It is another silent pensive cloud that greets me,
Assures me I have written this before
And another mental struggle now defeats me,
Assures me that I cannot win the war.

And yet another far-off birdsong lifts me
And echoes with a half-forgot refrain
Another feeble sunrise makes new morning
And nothing stands forever quite the same.

And I forgot to mention that I died on Monday. No, that’s not a metaphor. No, really… Well, kind of… Strictly speaking, I was assassinated. It was very unpleasant.

You see, we crazy collegians play a game called Assassins, which is sort of like living in a paranoid universe of fear and strife, only more paranoid and fearful. Everyone in the game is assigned a target, and someone is targeting them in turn. You must shoot your target with a stream of water in some fashion. I, alas, was killed the first day by an unusually poor stroke of luck: My target, my assassin, and an already-dead lookout had the same class. And so my target escaped, and whilst I berated the corpse, my assassin ran around the building and shot me in the back.

And so, after a night of drinking, I woke up at 7:15 feeling refreshed. I soon though better of it and slept until 9, which is better, but still abnormally early for a Saturday. And that party definitely deserved a longer recovery time, due to it’s high quality and unprecedented levels of inebriation. Not that I have an extremely high precedent for drunkenness. First time I’ve been physically impaired to a noticeable degree. Actually, it was kind of fun to find that my brain was a half-second behind my head, so to speak. And I suspect lowered inhibitions, which, given how neurotic I am, is not really too terrible. Clearly, I am a happy drunk. Of course, I am liable to jump on things and shout “wheeee!” when stone cold sober, so…

And of course, the right company helps. As does fried chicken, to a lesser degree (Zach would stab me over that last part, I suspect). So we (Zach, Chris, Zach’s lab partner John, Megan, and myself) went to Harold’s for dinner and thence to Hitchcock to play N64 and watch family guy. Apparently, performance in Smash Brothers is an exceptional accurate measure of drunkenness. Although basic competence helps too.

So, what’s round, white, and can be found in the physics building dumpster? Yes, that’s right, a toilet. Additionally, an unidentified brick of electronics from 1962 with capacitors the size of your head. Also, HEPA filters and a lot of plywood. Today marked the first actual scavenging for ScavHunt, and we dragged back quite a haul from the dumpsters. There were also a VCR, an air conditioner, a dissertation on Maya architecture, extensive blueprints for the children’s hospital, a coffee machine, two office chairs, six heavy wooden shelving units, and a brief document entitled “How to utilize the enlarger”.

No, it certainly doesn’t make sense, but it’s beautiful...

It is always slightly disappointing when events continue happening at a pace that leaves me no time to record my reactions. Of course, sometimes something else happens which entirely obscures that. Nevertheless, if I can impart one thing to the world at large from this past week, it is that they should go see Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

It was, at the very least, much better than my last trip to Doc Films. heh… hrm… moving on…

In any case, Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a cinematic masterpiece, which demonstrates just how fucked-up-insane the world would be if we shared it with ‘toons. It’s like film-noir, but with a talking baby and a more attractive female lead (“I’m not bad. I’m just drawn that way”). Also, Christopher Lloyd is just the right kind of zany creepiness to make a superb ‘toon villain. And there’s just so much great stuff in this movie that I should stop and just say that every one of you should go see it, especially if you haven’t seen it since you were little.

“Is that a rabbit in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”

“Twoooooo Biiiiits!”

“This is the latht time I work with thomeone with a thpeech impediment!”

“What do see in a guy like him?”
“He makes me laugh.”

So, yeah, I went to the Med for dinner and to the movie with Megan, Chris, Jim, and Lisy on Thursday, and an excellent time was had. I had the most boring pizza available, but it was delicious. So there.

And you see, I’m not even a week behind reporting that. You people are lucky you don’t have to wait for this blog to be delivered by stagecoach. Don’t ask me how that would work. What do I look like, a postal engineer? anyway, the point is, the Internet + lazy > the Wheel.

Anyway, the rest of the weekend was also lots of fun, though Megan repeatedly schooled me at the original Smash Brothers on N64… also Mario Kart, though at least there were computer player for me to school there.

And I did my part preserving the athletic honor of Woodward house by playing IM soccer on Sunday (okay, so technically I was watching baseball in the lounge and didn’t realize there was a game until people started gathering, but I went…) And I did my part by playing goalie in the second half. Now, considering that I haven’t played soccer since 8th-grade and haven’t played goalie since 6th, I did pretty well. I am an excellent goalie… about half the time. So I may have let four goals get by. Although we never scored, so it didn’t really matter. And I did have some good saves, including a manic sequence of scrambling and diving to prevent it becoming 6-0.

And in the process I worked up some mighty sunburn to celebrate the weather. Although actually it only added to the sunburn I had from watching women’s rugby the previous day. Yeah, rugby is a crazy sport. It’s like every minute is that crazy last-second play in football where everyone is trying to lateral. Only sometimes they stop to form pyramids or play reverse tug-o-war. Yeah, it’s beautiful.

And just when I though nothing could get crazier than my weekend… something entirely unexpected happens. But I’ve rambled just long enough today, and that’s confusing enough to wait a bit.

(HWA! Edited to prevent bad luck. Or something.)

It is April and I am a fool. They’re not particularly connected, though I do have a story about that. But first…

Today is beautiful. I am insanely happy for no good reason, other than it’s spring and the grass is green and it feels like it’s about to rain.

And look! Alex is blogging again. And all it took was a widget. These widget dealies are kind of fun, actually. I’ve plastered my desktop with news tickers at the moment. Don’t tempt me on the poetry, dude. I might just do it.

Although, speaking of April fools, it was interesting to find, on returning from class Friday, that there was an extra mattress propped up against our closet. It turns out it was being stored there by Shane for the purposes of depriving his roommate of the use of his mattress, with the aid of Zach. End result: around 3 PM, a very tired-looking Mike came and got a mattress from us.

My own activities in the spirit of this holiday were to walk past tour groups whilst carrying The Electrical Engineering Handbook. Let me tell you something about the handbook: it is round about 5 inches thick (think unabridged hardbound dictionary size). So I hope I managed to subtly freak out somebody. Why was I carrying a massive book about electrical engineering, you ask? Well, I had to renew it. And to answer the next question, well, how else were we going to figure out how to disassemble that garage door motor? And I figured we should keep it around until Scav Hunt, just in case.

And now the (slightly delayed now) bad news…

Too many people are dying. I mean, the Pope and Terry Schiavo are getting the headlines, but I’m really going to miss Mitch Hedberg. I mean, Jesus, I just saw the man perform less than two months ago. As Maciej said, “motherfuck.”

Also, my sympathies to the U of I folk on the basketball front.

Ah well. Let’s see how if the Cubs (or White Sox, if you are of that misguided bent) can do something this year.

And now I’m going outside. Wheee! Spring! April! Craziness! Finally, things are getting interesting again...

What quality news we have in Chicago. These headlines are courtesy of M. McKinz.

Actual Headlines from the Chicago Sun-Times: April 6, 2005


Acting River Grove Mayor Defeats Genital-Piercing Rival

Missing Man Finally Found--In Elevator

Cops Don't Like Strip Club's Art of the Peel

Protests Erupt After Ms. Wheelchair Loses Title For Being Seen Standing

Ex-Maid Says She Saw Singer Laughing in Shower With Boy

Thompson Going Out With A Bang--Wife To Shoot Ashes From Cannon

Bishop: I Never Suggested Jesus Was Gay

They Might Not Be Vampires, but Bats Bite

Daly, Hooters, Match Made in Marketing

Hair Thieves Leave Horses With No Tales To Tell

Escaped Convict Found With Warden's Wife After 11 Years

Married Cousins Say Their Love is More Than a Family Affair

Another Widget Blog

So...again with the blogging.

The weather here in Grinnell is beautiful, and I just got done
listening to Pat and Ron on the radio. Even though the Cubs lost, the
warm weather and ridiculous banter gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling, or
maybe that was some bad chicken I ate at dinner. Either way.

The thing about widget blogging it it makes me title every entry and
condenses the text into stanza-like form. So feel free to consider
what I'm writing to be poetry. Hey, if we're lucky, maybe Pat will
actually grace us with some actual poetry. Hmm...or would that be
unlucky...

So..I've had this album for awhile, but it's sheer brilliance has only recently hit me. I got into Jazz through Kind of Blue, which is an excellent starting point, yet it seems like there is nowhere to go from there. How can you expand your horizons when you started with (arguably) the best stuff out there?

After memorizing Kind of Blue note for note, I went to my uncle (former jazz columnist for the Chicago Sun Times) and asked him for some good jazz. He led me to Thelonious Monk. Now, let me just say, Monk is brilliant. Really great stuff. Yet, he's a far cry from Miles. Aside from the fact that Monk was a pianist, their basic styles of jazz are completely different. Monk is Monk; he's completely unique. However, his sharp technique and wild notation contrast the almost epic sounds that Miles can create with his trumpet. Monk is a genius in his own right, but his work is incomparable to the sound found on Kind of Blue. But, as Pat would say, I digress.

So, after being thoroughly saturated with Thelonious, I returned to my search to find something akin to Kind of Blue. When my uncle learned that I was into Miles Davis, he quickly gave me a list of albums to start with. Of course, Kind of Blue was there. Underneath it, however, was an album that I had heard talk about, but was completely unfamiliar with--Porgy & Bess. On my next trip to good old Rolling Stones Records, I picked up a copy.

My first listen was a bit shocking. I was completely unprepared for what I heard. I was expecting a quartet and got slammed with an orchestra, and it appeared that this Gil Evans character was behind the madness. I gave the album a couple more listens before putting it away for months. I suppose I thought it was mediocre at the time because it was not at all what I was expecting/looking for.

After a continued period of searching that turned up such gems as Hancock's Maiden Voyage, Coltrane's A Love Supreme, and Davis' own Birth of the Cool, I lay down my quest for a successor to Kind of Blue and reveled in my jazz collection, savoring what I'd found. It was only then that I returned to Porgy & Bess. "Might as well give it another listen," I thought. I'm very glad I did. Only now is the sheer majesty of Gil Evans' orchestra apparent to me, not to mention the way Miles' trumpet cuts through the other horns to carve the pure jazz out of Gershwins score. From the tuba on "Buzzard Song", to the classic "Summertime", to the crescendo on "Prayer", to the triumphant finale of "There's A Boat That's Leaving...", Porgy & Bess is a landmark in jazz, and should not be missed.

untitled

well...I'm trying something new here. I seem to be blogging from a
widget. For all of you who don't know what a widget is, type
Konfabulator into Google and see what I'm talking about. It's quite a
brilliant little device and, if it works, it will allow me to blog with
even bothering to leave my desktop. Not that this means I'll be
updating more often, but technology is still cool.

Peace out.

So, I realized that I haven't blogged it up in awhile, so I thought I throw you all a bone. Besides, Pat's incoherent babbling is getting frightning, and that's no way to run a blog. I sincerely doubt that the man is capable of coming up with anything coherent these days. But it's all good.

Therefore...onto the blogging about events not directly related to P.J.'s love life:
As some of you may know, Grinnell has a trend for obscenely long breaks, which means that I go back to school tomorrow (a week after everyone else left town). During this lovely extra week, I was fortunate enough to have time to continue plowing through the Beatles Anthology and see some truly quality films. The first was Million Dollar Baby. It's been out for awhile, but I managed to catch it at the Lake, and I thought I should see what all the hub-bub was about. I must admit that the hype is justified. Clint Eastwood sure can make a good movie. I'm not going to spoil the ending just in case some of you haven't seen it, but it's powerful stuff. (P.S. Pat, if you are still haven't seen this movie and are currently operating under the notion that it's about foxxxy boxing, you are going to be sorely disapointed).

I also managed to see Aviator the week before that, so I was able to compare the two since they were really the only ones competeing for all those Acadamy Awards. If you ask me, Million Dollar Baby wins. I blame Coppola for forgetting to put a plot-line into Aviator.

Last night, I went to see Sin City. Now, I was operating under the preconcieved notion that I was about to witness the most pretentious movie ever made. (My father, however, pointed out that the Matrix movies take the prize in that category). I must say that I was pleased with the way the film turned out, as it is a truly rightious return to noir. And I also have a heap of newfound respect for Mickey Rourke. Now, Ebert gave this movie 4 stars. I'd say that's probably one-half or one too many. Sin City is highly entertaining and doesn't try to take itself too seriously. It is certainly original, while still keeping faithful to the comics and the film noir genre. Still, when you compare it to other 4-star films (such as Million Dollar Baby), you can see where it falls a bit short.

Quality stuff overall, though.

Well, hell… if I knew what I was doing, I’d have to have a plan, wouldn’t I?

I love thunderstorms. More beautiful weather today. It actually was traditionally beautiful most of the day, but we got some hardcore intermittent thunderstorms this evening. And I’m just the kind of person who stands outside longer when it’s raining, so that was fun.

And it looks as though I might not fall asleep in Social Science this quarter. Huzzah. It’s communists a-go-go at the moment, but we are getting into the 20th century after all. Also, timelines of the start of World War I are amusing. For the first week of August, Germany finds someone else to declare war on every day. You know, it’s been kind of a bad century for Germany.

So let’s see… coherent descriptions of events. So the final event of spring break was the seeing of a movie with, let’s say… more incest than you’d expect from a movie with incest. Good movie though, in its own way. But either way, we managed to commandeer another Dunkin’ Donuts, so it was well worth it. Good times.

I managed to do so much stuff over spring break that it almost feels relaxed back here at the U of C. Of course, things are still winding up here. Ah well. And it’s not as though I have nothing better to do, I just don’t want to do it yet… delicious, delicious procrastination. I ought to write another rant.

Well, this is interesting. I feel almost normal. And normal, you should realize, is very strange for me. I have a certain flair for weathering ridiculous intensity, after all. And I’m just a crazy bastard on principle.

Number of times this week a woman has said she could beat me up: 3… anyway…

Billy Joel… I didn’t see that coming. But “Only the Good Die Young” is stuck in my head lately, so there it is. what’s odd is that this is the second Billy Joel song I’ve had seriously wedged in my head lately. It’s shaping up to be an interesting and amusing trend, but I draw too many connections.

And I had “Twentieth Century Fox” stuck in my head, but I know exactly how that got there… and she always did say she wanted more nicknames, but I’ll run that by her when she gets back from Florida.

Inaccessible rambling and wry one-liners – that’s what I’m here for, folks… well, maybe normal was a bit of a stretch. But I’m close enough.

And it’s impossible not to feel good with the weather like it is. It is fuckin’ beautiful out there. We hit the 60’s today. And I do love the 60’s. Good as a temperature and as a decade. Anyway…

I do love the word “anyway”. It hides abrupt changes of thoughts slightly better than “[generic transition]”. Of course, “[generic transition]” has sentimental value for me now, but that’s an entirely different topic. And although that’s no reason in and of itself for me not to switch to it, I can only pack this blog with so many obscure personal references…

And so it goes…

Oh man, I’m not sure I’ve actually done anything here but amuse myself, and possibly exasperate one woman, who isn’t actually paying attention at the moment. So most of you should think of this as another (but now excessively long) throwaway opener. But I hope I have been modestly entertaining, or failing that, bewildering.

Yeah, you should see what I don’t publish. Actually, you shouldn’t; that’s kind of the point of not publishing it.

Well, I’ll get a sensible post in later today; nothing really happening at the beginning of the quarter. Kate tells me they don’t give me enough work. I’m almost inclined to agree.

Then again, sometimes I make people nervous.

And… intelligible commentary begins now. Man, if I keep doing throw-away openers like that, I’ll just make more people nervous. At any rate, I have once again seen Javier and the Bear in concert, and I must say they rocked me in a manner similar to that of a hurricane, while my face was transmuted to a liquid state… awesomeness. Missed the first couple of songs due to vehicular trickiness, but what I heard was great. I got there in time for “Ziggy Stardust” and it only got better from there, from drifts in to covering country with “Mama Tried” to original rock epics like “Goat People”. And that’s leaving out some of my favorites. Anyway, much rockage and praise of both Javier and The Bear. Also, they are slowly shaping a cultural institution by replacing “Freebird” with “I’ll Fight You for Your Woman”.

And similarly in music, I managed to blow slightly too much money at Rolling Stone the other day. Rolling Stone is a beautiful thing. Eight-dollar CDs and copies of the Onion: what more can a man ask for? This week’s additions to my slowly growing musical collection:

-Derek and the Dominos, Layla (Christ. That is some fine guitar. And everything else, really.)
-Simon and Garfunkel, Sounds of Silence (a little sloppy, but worth it)
-Postal Service, Give Up (They still own my soul, but more so now. Also doubles my albums for the current decade.)
-Bob Dylan, Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (haven’t gotten through this yet, but Bob hasn’t done me wrong yet. Also, for a while there I had his hair.)

And much more happened this week, but I’m tired.

And finally, incongruously, being a poet gives everything an upside; I’ve written more than usual lately. I may even have to start letting people see it. But I’m told poets die young. Clearly, I’ll have to become a musician instead… hmm. Well, maybe something in science. Although I don’t think computer programmers have been around long enough to figure out what our life expectancy is.

Very few people realize that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is the same man who later became known as Conan the Barbarian…

So I'm home, and what a long crazy quarter it has been. For one, most of you probably think it's crazy that I had a quarter instead of a semester, but that's only where it begins.

Analogy of the day:
You know in Star Wars, when they go after the Death Star, there's the one guy who gets to make the shot first? And it's pretty impressive, given the situation, that he's gotten to that point and survived going up against the Death Star all the way down the trench to where the exhaust port is. He's clearly a damn good pilot, right? And so he gets to make the shot first, and there's a kaboom, but it doesn't quite work. It just "impacted on the surface." So it doesn't really count, and Luke has to come along to save the day, because he's the protagonist. You know that guy?

I'm totally that guy.

Now, for some this would be depressing, but they're missing one overarching truth:

They're going to build another Death Star. Of course, then the question becomes, "Are you Billy Dee Williams?" And I think we all know the answer to that question. And even if that is not the case, they'll probably build at least one more after that. The Empire had a real fixation with Death Stars. Compensating, I suspect.

Which means the point is...

I remain incontrovertibly geeky. Frankly, I can't believe this didn't occur to me sooner.

Sweet Zombie Jesus! I’m alive!

Also, when the snow is insanely fluffy like it is now, it’s easy to catch it on your tongue.

I wrote probably the best social science paper I’ve written this quarter in just over three hours.

And I’M DONE! WOOHOO! TAKE THAT WINTER QUARTER!

Oh man, did I need that pickup. You can only spend so many days straight on frantic academic effort before the burnout sets in (or the Death Flu, in my case). I’m really looking forward to hitting some double-digit sleep in the near future. And emerging from social semi-isolation (er… except for the fencing party).

And finally, I must laud and heap with praise all those involved in UT’s production of The Crucible, AKA that play that I watched immediately before the Death Flu set in. Contrast with illness only improves theatre. And what marvelous theatre it was. Witch hunts are intense, especially when you know the psychotic bitch who’s trying to kill everybody, and the self-righteous bastard of a judge that’s letting it happen – also, the wobbly drunken comic relief character. But really, they’re great people. The drunk one would be Zach, for those of you playing along at home in “how often will the word ‘drunk’ occur in the same sentence as Zach?” game).

And so, though I am not doing anything particularly impressive over spring break, well, I’m rather fond of breathing room. I will be chilling somewhere in the vicinity of Chicago for the time being (I don’t have to go home till the end of the week).

Mind, I have no idea how I made it through this quarter. I promise, at some point soon, someone will prove to me that I have no idea how to live, and that pure, random guesswork is all that keep my heart beating. But now I’m just being needlessly metaphorical.

Half-giddy, half-exhausted,

Ladies and gentlemen, Jackson Browne!

Running on - running on empty
Running on - running blind
Running on - running into the sun
But I’m running behind

Yeah, and happy Pi Day everyone, just to prove I am still geeky enough to go here.

I know I've said my life was boring, but the Death Flu? Man, the Death Flu is not an acceptable way of adding spice to my life.

Alright, the flu that I have is not deadly to my knowledge, but that’s what we’ve been calling all the diseases which seem to be sweeping the University. I’d forgotten how unpleasant vomiting is; distinctly un-fun, although fortunately I only had to deal with one episode. And chills, those are distinctly unpleasant too. The Death Flu shattered my temperature regulation to the point where I had to huddle under blankets after drinking a large quantity of cold water.

Of course, the three days before the death flu were a clinic in how to shatter my immune system. So, I’d been up late for a couple nights finishing my Comp Sci final project, with minimal sleep (10-ish over two days), and then there was the fencing party.

Now, the fencing party was quality: much insanity, much brilliance, moderate amounts of alcohol, and an occasional reference to naked wrestling. Also, Dictionary is a fantastic game. For example:

Verbigeration –
“the constant or obsessive repetition of meaningless words or phrases”
“The untimely arrival if a very big object in one’s location, crushing the spine”
“The process of debating the economic merit of professional wrestling… while naked”
“Poking a verb with a stick until it attacks, killing you and your entire family”
“The process of turning any word with more than 28 letters into a verb”
“… also, ‘refrigeration’ as pronounced by a speaker of a tonal language”
“Lindsay is a lush.”

That last one is not entirely in the spirit of the game… anyway, depending on which version of the game, you would vote for whichever definition you believed was real, or whichever you thought I wrote. The first one is real, by the way. Mine is “crushing the spine”.

Alright, where were we? Ah, immune system troubles. You see, after the party broke up at 3:00, a splinter faction formed, and we continued the party elsewhere, mainly by playing spades and euchre. Insane? perhaps. At any rate, we continued until everyone decided to go to breakfast. At which point we had breakfast, and then tried to watch a movie (The Emperor’s New Groove). Alas, within 30 minutes, everyone was asleep, and we woke up in time to see the end credits. Official end of party: 11:00 AM. Woot. Alas, my digestive system went to hell shortly afterward, beginning with the inability to eat lunch and culminating in the aforementioned vomiting 12 hours later. But it was a good party. And also clearly not a boring week.

Today’s emotions are sponsored by Tom Petty, whose distinct absence from my iTunes has been corrected.

And clearly, I have to blog something to take a break from code madness. Go CompSci final project!

And I may be taking a slightly more stream-of-thought direction, because I’ve been reading the early archives again (sheer brilliance, some of it, and incoherent otherwise). What can I say? I like nostalgia.

That and I’m developing a hell of an introspective streak. Alright, fine, I’ve always had an introspective streak, but I blame recent expansion on my being single, which is fascinating, in that I’ve never been legitimately single before. Well, I was kind of, but that was before I had any idea what I was doing. Not that I do now, of course. But the lack of an immediate direction is new.

Then again, there is a world of “single” totally foreign to me, and I had a chance to observe this at lunch today. I speak, of course, of the hookup people, some of whom I chatted with at lunch, and whose strange customs fascinate me to no end. Seriously, it’s like a parallel universe (cue “Everyone else has had more sex than me”). If you’ve never heard a gay guy criticize a girl for her perspective on oral sex, well, it’s actually very entertaining… and only slightly disturbing with respect to certain details. I’m trying to decide whether revealing those details myself will be more or less terrifying than leaving it to the imagination. Measurements were involved. I’ll stop there. Moving on…

Speaking of good, clean fun, there’s nothing quite like seeing a man mummified in duct tape, as was done to our ScavHunt captain, Marvin, last Wednesday, for a fund-raiser no less. $2 to the team fund got you 30 seconds of tape time. Someone laid down $20, and that’s when Marvin was truly doomed. Tape usage was creative and efficient. By the end, he was completely immobilized, and we had to make sure he was still breathing (due to duct tape corset action)… before we decided to carry him triumphantly through the halls of Max East. Eventually, we did get him out of the tape (alive, even).

Also, the purpose of the ScavHunt meeting was actually to choose the team name. Know this and despair, for we are:

Team Fluffy, Destroyer of Worlds!

Now that’s climactic. And back to Java-mancy...

Yes, I've finally done it. I'm proud to announce my triumphant return to social commentary! That's right. I've finally written another rant. Hope y'all like it.

Editorial of a Madman XXI:
Giving up Sanity for the Sake of Our Lord
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Yes, it’s that time of year again: A time of chaos and uncertainty, a time of loss and pain for billions, a time momentarily preceded by wild and crazy partying in New Orleans. Yes, it’s that time of year again. Yes, it’s Lent.

The term Lent, of course, originally refers to the fact that at this point in his career, Jesus was “living on borrowed time”, according to this passage from Paul’s second letter to the Decepticons:

“(1) Yea verily, for lo, Our Lord went into the city of Jerusalem a hunted man, and his life was on loan from the Sanhedrin, (2) yet they darest not pick him up in the midst of the disciples, for they were turkeys. (3) And lo, forsooth, that very Tuesday Our Lord went into the house where he was staying with a crowd of the disciples, (4) and there he taught them, ate with them, and got shit-faced, that he might demonstrate the cowardice of the Sanhedrin.”

This, of course, is the origin of Mardi Gras, which was moved to the preceding Tuesday so as not to interfere with the feng shui of Lent, which, in light of later events, became a time of fasting and repentance, rather than continued partying down.

But is the Lent of this day and age really true to the spirit of Lent? Has Lent, like Ramadan and Yom Kippur before it, become just another over-commercialized fast-fest? Are we simply wandering in a spiritual desert of readymade Lent sentiments and pagan symbolism? Are we abstaining from true religious meaning? Perhaps.

Few are aware, for example, that for most of the year, the Easter Bunny works as a homosexual Jewish pornographer, a fact that is both disturbing and, for all you know, accurate. But, in reality, the problems of Easter are an entirely different issue from the problems of Lent. We’ve all seen it: The Lent decoration start going up in January, and less commercial, but no less meaningful, holidays like President’s Day, Earth Day, and National Pig Day (March 1st), fall by the wayside. Valentine’s Day, of course, is no more than a bitter, resentful footnote surrounded by failed resolutions against eating chocolate. Some would argue that Valentine’s Day is an integral to compelling a true spirit of suffering and resolve in Lent. Others would suggest that these people are in need of a stiff drink. This usually ends theological discourse, but I digress. In fact, I digress constantly and enthusiastically.

So it was written, so it shall be done,
Doctor Funk

Oh sweet Jesus have I been fencing. And writing papers – so many papers. But let’s focus on the fencing.

Ladies and gentlemen, behold! I am officially the worst male epeeist to attend the Midwestern Fencing Championships at Notre Dame: 0-7, 35th out of 35, baby, though a couple bouts were very close. The team did alright though: 8th out of 14. But the point is, ‘twas most fun, and educational. For example, I learned:

-Everyone has matching socks, but only Oberlin’s fencers are crazy enough to wear matching rainbow socks.
-That said, only Chicago’s men’s epee team was crazy enough to wear matching Burger King crowns. I was the Archduke of Bohemia. Said crowns were obtained in Hegewisch. Why Hegewisch, you ask? Well…
-The 6:15 Friday South Shore train does not run all the way to South Bend, but the train 90 minutes behind it does, and the best way to get that one is to stop over at Hegewisch, on the Indiana border.
-MSU’s fencing team is nearly as cool as ours, and was fun to play Mafia with.
-Gold medal sabreists are really, really good at what they do. Got to see the roommate of everyone’s favorite Irishperson in action. Very impressive. I intended to say hi, but I didn’t get the opportunity.
-U of C students will discuss metaphysics at the drop of a hat, although how we got to that topic from computer games I still don’t know.

Well, my mind has been officially blown.

Seriously, though. Check this out. You can download it here: http://www.illegal-art.org/audio/grey.html