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Off to Key West for Megan's wedding. Updates of the trip to follow, depending on wi-fi availability in the hotel.
NERDS!
Posted at: 22:00
[path: /travelog] permanent link
Update: More Hilarity from the bottom of the My Documents barrell
My student housing roommate preferences form, five years ago. Haute 2005 commentary, now in italics!
1. What is your smoking preference?
I do not smoke, nor can I tolerate the smell of smoke. My father smokes, and it disgusts me.
Heh
2. Do you want a very clean room, a very messy room, or do you really not care either way?
I do not consider myself a "neat freak," and I can tolerate a moderate level of clutter. However when I need to find something, I want to be able to find it without searching through piles of junk.
Still true, though a quick look around my room reveals the fact that the desire to find things is vastly outweighed by my supreme laziness
3. Try and estimate how late you think you will be going to bed and how early you will rise.
My earliest class begins at 8:30 AM, so I plan on going to bed between 11 PM and midnight, and as such I would appreciate a semi-quiet environment around that time. I will need to wake up around 7:00 AM.
A HAHAHAHAHA *wipes tear* Oh my
4. What kind of music do you like?
I like all kinds of music, except for country music and rap (which could only loosely be interpreted as music anyway). Recently I have started to listen to punk rock bands like Dead Kennedys. I really enjoy punk rock because it actually has a message, not just a fat beat with meaningless drivel spoken over it like that which is played over all the major radio stations in my area.
Ah, a preference with veiled, unrequested editorializing...beautiful.
5. What are your hobbies?
When I find free time I enjoy reading, discovering new bands, talking with my friends, working on leisurely video projects, and spending time on an online gaming community commonly referred to as MUD.
meh
6. Who is your favorite superhero, and why?
My favorite superhero would be Wolverine from the X-Men. Setting aside his (almost) indestructible adamantium skeleton and claws, and his heightened healing ability, he's just a really cool guy. He is independent and gruff, yet he has a great sense of humor and a deep heart. Wolverine is a true Byronic hero
Wolverine = Byronic hero. Me = pretentious freshman.
Posted at: 22:00
[path: /yt] permanent link
I was cleaning up my PC (easier than cleaning up my room), and I found some papers that I had written in high school. The most interesting of these was one that I had titled *winces* "Abortion: Making a Life or Death Decision." I didn't know that I had an official stance on abortion, much less a ham-fisted, sweetly naive and ignorant one, but apparently my younger self had this covered. Featuring such embarrassing lines as "What America needs more than anything is a strong moral leader that will rid our country of the horror of abortion" and "A message needs to be sent by the American government that abortion is not a 'way out.'"
Wowza.
Posted at: 22:00
[path: /yt] permanent link
Nothing much of late. I go to class occasionally, I go to work, I play WoW, I sleep a lot, I don't do laundry or take out the trash.
I hate my apartment. A few weeks ago, I woke up to the sound of rain in the hallway again. I open my door to find the Fury of the Nile ride from Worlds of Fun has found its way into the hallway, the kitchen, and the living room. Apparently the upstairs neighbor decided to run a bath at 7am, then decided to make a sammich and forgot about the bath for 45 minutes while it flooded her apartment, and then mine, and then the downstairs neighbor in turn. Oddly enough, the downstairs neighbor was the first to notice. Then I woke up. Then the repair guy woke up the offending flooder by entering her apartment. Nothing was seriously damaged, but the walls are still damp three weeks later, and will likely mold and shoot out spores to colonize Justin and me in our sleep. We will then become the living dead, shooting out spores that will colonize all people we come into contact with. Pod people will reproduce at an exponential rate, silently conquering the world. All because of that fucking sandwich.
I enrolled again for the fall. Seems to be an exercise in futility, but it makes my parents happy. I know that there are benefits to getting a bachelor's degree. Going to class, working on projects, taking quizes and tests, succeeding. These things make me feel intelligent and worthwhile. But this feeling is fleeting, and I start skipping and failing, and it all seems futile. But I keep coming back for more. The classes I've chosen seem like fun, but they all do, in the beginning.
Posted at: 22:00
[path: /yt] permanent link
Stumbled upon something in the archive that I wrote three-four years ago for a gaming site to earn journalist credit for an E3 pass. My travel arrangements fell through, so I wasn't able to go to the convention, but I kind of like this piece. Not enough that it wasn't very difficult to resist the urge to edit...but still.
-----
Two months ago, I had a dream that I was sitting, smoking on the jungle gym in the yard of the elementary school I attended a lifetime ago. I don't smoke, well, I didn't at the time, I think the smoking was simply my recent viewing of The Royal Tenenbaums mucking around in my pre-sleep memories.
Margot Tenenbaum appealed to me as few characters are able to do. That it's Gwyneth Paltrow on screen doesn't hurt, but it's more the depiction of stunted emotional growth in full force that really touched me. Popular culture is saturated with stories of the gifted child forced to grow up and excel, despite feelings of extreme isolation. However, once these children prove how amazingly they can overcome whatever obstacles are intended to drive the plot forward, they continue to grow and mature, and find their respective happy endings.
Margot never grew up. The image of a young girl taking up the very adult, very stupid habit of smoking to me represents this forced maturity. It is tragically adorable to a kindred spirit to see the ways a talented child deals with these complex emotions. Seeing that girl still childishly hiding this habit from friends and family twenty-two years later, still, in fact, wearing the same girlish skirts, hits very close to home for a newly minted "adult" who also vainly holds on to the vices of his childhood.
And so I find myself this morning, and most other mornings, atop the jungle gym. It was on a whim at first that I left home thirty minutes early, bought my first pack of cigarettes, and set out to re-enact this dream that I was caught up on. I found this place not surrounded the forest I remember, but a denser forest of pre-fabricated housing. Whim quickly flowed into fascination at the changes the playground saw while I should have been changing as well. I like to think that it is this fascination, rather than any physical addiction to my new clandestine habit, that has brought me thirty minutes out of my way every morning. Everything that was once wooden is now rendered in brightly colored plastics shapes. The teeter-totters and merry-go-rounds were missing in action, likely victims of over-zealous parenting. The only familiar object in the yard was the jungle gym. Though, looking at my perch similarly reminds me of the ravages of time, what once looked so much like a magic carpet now calls up trigonometry.
The shapes may have changed, but looking around I can see that the general form has remained the same. In the far corner, I see the spot where I sat with my friends and remember when we finally figured out that "Aziza" was the answer to the Enchantress' final riddle. Seeing the swings through the smoke produced as I take a drag brings back being blown away by the ending of Ender's Game for the first time, just before the bell rang. And the ensuing cough brings back the physical sensation of the seemingly impossible task of inflating the gigantic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles blimp I brought for show and tell.
This flood of memories laps over consciousness, and I recall all the times technology passed me by. Nintendo became Super Nintendo and then Nintendo 64. Cassette tapes became CDs. Computers could talk and play games with each other. Books were ordered into chapters, and soon became thick, thousand page novels. I learned how to pinch every penny of allowance and lunch money in order to keep up with the steady pace of progress.
Keeping up is a rather sobering thought. Though I used to glaze over the pain in order to look back fondly on the giants of my childhood, now, sitting and smoking, I see Margot Tenenbaum smoking beside me in her bathtub. Video games and books were tools to escape the harsh reality of the other loud, mean children I couldn't understand. I took comfort in my isolated superiority through the shower of grown-up smiles at the big words and concepts I gleaned from their popular culture. I subsisted almost entirely on the admiration of teachers and parents alike, and I drove myself to learn and acquire in order to impress. Gaming was then both relaxation and socialization, the only bridging interest among my few friends.
As years passed and I grew and found myself, gaming was no longer a necessity. I now had real friends, I had involved myself in hours of service groups, stage productions, and part-time jobs. What had once been associated with a need for companionship and activity had been replaced. However, the obsession with books and games remained, associated now with the relief and joy they once provided in a much more practical sense.
And now I'm on the verge of becoming the adult I so admired as a child. Moving into my first apartment, half-way through my college education, and recently legally of-age, I have all of the components of adulthood under my belt. And yet, gaming remains a giant albatross around my neck. I have great difficulty finding my identity as a modern, twenty-first century adult when I would much rather stay up for an all-night dungeon crawl than complete the work required for passing my biology lab. When notes from my Japanese class are illustrated with Ninja Turtles and Sludge Vohaul. When time and time again I fail to meet expectations because I willingly distract myself. Sharing a cigarette in secret with Margot, I see that I too have failed to grow past the level of maturity with which I felt comfortable. Nostalgia has become a vice, a distraction from the responsibilities of adulthood only a child could envy.
And yet, as I stabbed out my cigarette this morning, awash in a sea of unpleasantly colored pre-formed plastic and pre-fabricated metal, I decided that distraction is better by far than delusion. I am comforted by the fact that though I am no longer a teenager, I still remember how to disappear into fantasy. Though I often look back on the way things were, I am still enraptured by the way things will be.
I don't want to be a kid again, but I don't want to lose the drive and obsessive love I've known all along. There is some unidentifiable balance, something ambiguous thing that I want to be.
And I realize, sitting in the trough of a very large sine wave, that will have to suffice as my identity as a young adult for this morning, as I'm now exceptionally late for work.
Posted at: 22:00
[path: /yt] permanent link
Starting this one with another quote from my wonderful co-workers:
"When it comes to poo, I'm very anal."
--Rose
I get a call from Michael tonight while I'm at work, he wants to let me know that Dacia's (the downstairs neighbor) apartment is flooding. Now, I've been at work all day, and Justin was in Belle Plaine, so I'm a little concerned. Their apartment has flooded before when our toilet overflows, or the shower is running, but since no one's home to use the facilities, water is apparently flowing of its own accord.
So I leave work and go home, and find brown water that's leaked into the hallway from the bathroom. I turn on the bathroom light, and find more of the brown water, plus black chunks of unidentifiable material standing on the bathroom floor, as well as in the bathtub, but predominately in the toilet. The toilet water is full of black water, the toilet seat is stained with brown water and covered in black chunks.
Given this evidence, I can assume that water, and presumably sewage, has issued forth from the toilet and the tub to curse my apartment. I'm surprised by lack of smell, but peeking my head into the bathroom treats me to the distinct smell of poo. So I call the landlord, no answer. I call the emergency maintence number, no answer, I leave a message. Thirty minutes later I get a call back from the maintenence guy, and we have the following conversation:
Him: Yeah, I was upstairs today doing some work on the sink, so a pipe fitting must be loose and it's leaking through the ceiling.
Me: Well, the water is brown, and there's black chunks everywhere. There's also stains in the tub and toilet.
Him: Yeah, the water looks like that because it came through the drywall.
Me: I don't think you understand, this water didn't come through the ceiling, it came out of the toilet and tub.
Him: Yeah...
Me: So I'm wondering what to do with this sewage...
Him: Yeah, well I don't have anyone I can send out tonight, so I'll have someone out tomorrow morning.
Me: So you want me to leave this sewage all over the bathroom and hallway leading into my kitchen for the next sixteen hours?
Him: Yeah, like I said I don't have anyone to send out tonight.
*long pause*
Me: So, your recommendation is to leave this sewage standing until you can send someone out tomorrow.
*longer pause*
Him: *extremely huffy* Well I guess I can come out with a mop myself...
Me: Look, I don't want to be an asshole, I just don't think it's a good idea to have sewage all over my apartment all night.
Him: I'll be right out. *click*
----
I hate to be the demanding late-night-asshole but sweet Jesus, if I'm getting paid to not make poo explode all over someone's bathroom, and I do make poo explode all over someone's bathroom, I like to think I'm not going to sass them about taking care of it.
Of note: I told the landlord today that I'm moving in August. Fuck this place.
Posted at: 22:00
[path: /yt] permanent link
I know I've bitched a lot about work, but here goes again:
Background: We're setting up an e-mail account in Outlook Express
Caller: It says "Display name"
Me: This is where you enter your name as you want it to be displayed when you send mail to people
Caller: So I want it to be [caller's name].com?
Me: No, you probably just want to put your name there, this is how people will know that the e-mail you send them is from you.
Caller: *long, long, long pause, peppered with loud, melodramatic sighing, and sporatic, slow typing*
Me: *muted sound of me bashing my head against my desk*
Caller: Okay, what now?
Me: You entered your name?
Caller: Yes.
Me: Okay, click on the "Next" button.
Caller: "Next?"
Me: Yes.
Caller: Click on it?
Me: Yes, please.
Caller: Okay.
Me: Okay. Now, you're going to enter your email address, please enter [his email address].
Caller: ...so this is where I do the shift thing?
Me: Yes, the @ is "shift-2."
Caller: *the slowest typing I've ever heard, seriously like 3 whole minutes passed here*
Caller: I'm sorry, I not very good at this.
Me: That's okay. If you've got the e-mail address entered, please click next.
Caller: Click next?
Me: Yes, please.
Caller: Okay, "my incoming mail server is a POP3 server?"
Me: Yes, please click in the entry field and enter [incoming mail server]
Caller: Click it?
Me: Yes please.
Caller: Nothing happens.
Me: Please click in the field marked "My incoming mail server:" and type [incoming mail server]
Caller: Nothing happens.
Me: Nothing happens when you click in the white field, you don't see a flashing cursor?
Caller: Yes, I see a flashing cursor.
Me: Please type [incoming mail server]
...
And so on.
God help me. Fucking AOL expatriates.
Posted at: 22:00
[path: /work] permanent link