If I were to write a letter to President Bush today about his address from last evening, this is how it would read.

Dear President Bush,

If you can use phrases like “sectarian onclaves enclaves” then you can learn to pronounce “nuclear” correctly for once in your life. Maybe you could have your dad show you?

Sincerely,
An American

Maybe he could have his dad read it to him.

The other day, I ordered something on BestBuy.com for pick-up in the store, and I was inspired to create a game out of it. I’m too chicken shit to play this game just yet, but I think it would be a good one.

What you need: A want of something that you can purchase from BestBuy.com for pick-up in a local store, a friend, no dignity, and a sense of humor. Also, a lack of fear of imprisonment or restraining orders could be helpful.

What you do: Order something from BestBuy.com to be picked up in your local store. Upon getting to the store, you will go wait in line to pick up your item or items and your friend will linger nearby pretending to look at shelved items. When it is your turn to pick up your order and you present your ID, credit card, and order receipt they will process your order and grab your item or items from the storage area behind them. You will then look at the items and politely tell them that you ordered [insert tasty restaurant dish here]. They will probably laugh, and you will civilly ask to send it back and get [whatever you said you ordered]. They will probably not know how to react. As they try to figure this one out, you will grow more impatient, louder, and more hysterical. “I ordered the fucking [insert dish], how hard is it for you to understand?! Just take it back and make me my goddamn [insert dish]!” Your friend will then rush over from the racks shouting something like “there you are! It’s time for your medicine, now get back to the car and you had better not give me any trouble getting into your cage, or else it’s the tazer for you!” He or she will then drag you out of the store while you make weak attempts to resist and shout nonsensical things like “but I don’t want to be a magic! Don’t make me do it!”

You will then get the fuck out of there before somebody tackles one of you and calls the cops.

They aren’t going to bring you [insert dish] in jail.

Today I awoke, and as I left my room to take a shower I noticed something strange. My shoes were directly outside my bedroom door, side by side and neatly placed. This was no accident. This was also not where I left them when I went to sleep last night. In the midst of the night or morning, somebody had moved my shoes. I was wondering if it was a message to me like “keep your dirty wet fucking shoes out of the entryway, asshole,” but when I looked many other pairs of shoes were in the entryway. On my way back from the kitchen, I saw a pair of Patrick’s shoes sitting outside the doorway to his room, and I realized what was happening. Upon further inspection of my shoes, they contained two treats: a Hot Wheels Toyota AE-86 Corolla (a drifting machine) and a Reese’s Peanut Butter Tree.

In the last week, this is not the first time that I have been presented with food and an amusement in my shoes.

After attending a highly classy Wine and Cheese party on Saturday, when it was finally time for me to go home and pass out (at 6AM), I was instructed to “put my shoes on, now.” This, of course, immediately roused my suspicions and I subsequently inspected my shoes. In one boot there was a bunch of peas that were at one time frozen. In the other was a condom. Best. Party. Ever.

These two shoe related food/amusement incidences were not perpetrated by the same person, nor were they coordinated in any way. Saturday was a wine induced moment of inspiration. Today is the day when, according to some, St. Nick comes to leave treats in the shoes of good little boys and girls. This doesn’t just happen around this time of the year, though, and it doesn’t just happen to me.

People have died in the desert from not checking their boots or shoes for scorpions. This leads me to think that it is in the nature of the universe not for things to tend toward disorder, but for things to tend toward treats in shoes.

The real question is: If people in the desert had put the non-scorpion boot on first, would they still be alive today? The answer to that question would also clear up one other mystery: is the scorpion the food or the amusement?

…Or was St. Nick just out of coal?

You will get an A, unless you’re one Mr. H. Edit: then you will get an A minus.
Man, all you have to do is show up and accept that while your art may look cool, whatever teacher says you should do is probably right, then do it. After that, stop going to class for a while and then when you do go, receive an A. That’s pretty much what I did. That’s what Pat did (we’re assuming he has an A but we won’t know until he gets his report card since he was never there on days when we got our grades back and has been too lazy to ask for them). You should have thought of this, it’s so simple.

I made some shazzes in this class, but only one was really neat-o. I started with these:

…and ended up with turned them into this. Neat, huh?
Plus, it was fun, and I got that grade that we all love.

No, I didn’t mean ‘B+’.

Don’t read on if you are going to be pissy about me revealing details about the book. However, since I am less than two-fifths of the way done with the book, I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.

Here’s my problem with the Illuminati: they don’t make sense. The Illuminati is supposed to be this super-secret underground cult hidden from the world of organized religion, whom they have sworn to destroy. Their current mission, as of page one-hundred and eighty-six (of four-hundred and ninety-eight pages in my copy) is to destroy the Vatican, thereby aiding severely in the collapse of Catholicism, their age-old arch-enemy. Cool, fine, whatever. That makes sense. It really does. Buuuuut, the Illuminati have been hidden so incredibly deeply underground for over four-hundred years that everyone, including scholars who choose to study the Illuminati history specifically and the entire Vatican, thinks that they have died out. On the contrary, they have people everywhere including in Vatican City. W.T.F. If you are so incredibly latent that even your arch nemesis thinks that you’ve died out, how is it that you can recruit people for four-hundred years and be able to get people that are willing to betray the friggin Pope without having a single loose tongue? That doesn’t seem logical. Furthermore, these people have been biding their time for four-hundred years, and not a single one of them has jumped the gun on trying to destroy the Vatican. The people that are working now on destroying the Vatican are carrying out the desires of people from four or five generations before them. That is some kind of patience, let me tell you. People don’t like to let their life’s work be left to those that will come after them. Generations of people that came before the current Illuminati worked at a plan that they knew they would never see come to fruition. I have not met a person that is willing to look that far into the future with their work. Do you know of people that will start a job today, thinking that they will need their great great great grandson to finish it? I doubt it. Obviously, there are people that start things and do not finish them (researchers and scientists, and even writers) but I believe that they all began their tasks with the distinct goal of finishing it in time to leave the results and benefits to those that would come after them. Maybe I’m just being cynical when I say that I am a firm believer that people are inherently impatient and indiscreet, but then again I like to believe the worst about people, then when I meet a good person I can be pleasantly surprised. Also, when I do something wrong, I can blame it on what I believe to be “human nature.”

At any rate, besides these two things that constantly nag me from the back of my mind, this book is a lot of fun to read. Be warned, of course, that it takes quite a bit of suspension of disbelief.

Update: Nevermind. I’ve gotten over it (by reading the rest of the book basically nonstop). If you haven’t done it yet, I recommend the hell out of it.

The title is a throwback to the old “ScrabbleFuckers” days wherein Gary and I would play WordBiz internet Scrabble against people from like Australia, and we could get away with such words. They had no idea that ‘gofnosa,’ ‘taxz,’ and ‘lovefist’ are not English words. I don’t blame them, though, since (according to my education concerning Australian dialect, which consists of a single episode of the Simpsons) they actually speak more gibberish than anything.

I digress. The main point of the title is that I just did my taxes last night, and whilst I am greatly happy to find that my insurance for the summer will be paid for by my Federal refund, I owe the state money. I know, this really sucks. I’m pretty sure that this is the third year in a row that I have owed the state tax revenue. In the past two years I have paid the state I think a total of sixteen dollars, except I’m pretty sure that they only collected ten of them, because one year I did the direct e-payment thing and I put in the information and they just never collected the payment. Oh well. This year I am making sure that they get my payment, so I am mailing them a check. I don’t want them to miss out on the eight cents of income tax that I owe. My mother tells me every year to round the amounts, but if I did that, then I would not owe them eight cents. Man, if I knew that someone owed me eight cents and they were going to round it out, I’d be pissed, and the last thing I want is the Illinois state government angry at me. They issue my driver’s license. I need that thing to prove that I can legally buy beer and other potables. So, instead of figuring that it is going to cost them more to process my check than the check is worth and rounding down and stiffing them, I am going to do the “exact” thing and mail off my check with my forms.

Oh, one more thing: Illinois, don’t spend it all in one place, alright?

Oh. My. God. This weekend was quite a fun time. Friday night, I had a bunch of drinks, then turned 21 and hit the bars where I subsequently got more drinks (and more drunk). It was a great time, and for a long while I fought the forces that compelled me to continue to drink beyond that point where I draw the line (namely Aaron and Jen) and I was winning the battle. Was, that is, until the bouncer who had carded me remembered that it was my birthday and decided to do a Jager bomb with me. I made it all the way home, was in bed, and was trying to fall asleep before I passed the tipping point and was forced to foul my garbage can (placed with a large amount of foresight directly adjacent to my bed). When I woke, I felt sluggish and nautious for a few hours (probably the closest to being legitimately hung over that I have ever been) and I felt like passing out and/or puking in the shower, but after a while I felt better. My dad came down, as well did Sarah and Chris, and they and I and Aaron went out to eat dinner at Cheddar’s. Funny story: if they run out of mashed potatoes at Cheddar’s, they will express their laments that they are lacking in potatoes that have been mashed, and instead will offer you other potato products such as twice baked potatoes or a baked potato. You’re thinking well, isn’t that considerate of them, but here’s what the general consensus was: Aaron’s twice baked potato resembled the hell out of a pile of mashed potatoes wherein the outside had been made slightly brown, and baked potatoes can be thought of as dry mashed potatoes that just haven’t lost their continuity. Needless to say, we improvised a little. Also, I think I’m the first kid who drinks to turn twenty-one and order milk at his birthday dinner, then subsequently go out and get trashed. Don’t even try to figure that one out. My dad and I and some friends got drunk at my house, got some T-Bell, and then headed to Del’s. We played some pool and had a couple of pitchers and then came home and passed out.

After my dad left, I cleaned myself up and prepped myself for the next weekend experience: House of Blues Chicago for the Hellogoodbye, Acceptance, Panic! At the Disco, The Academy Is… concert. If you haven’t seen these bands, do it now. NOW. It was a great time. I had fun getting sweaty in the pit, I caught a drumstick from the drummer of Acceptance, and I was sexually assaulted by a seventeen year old girl. Yeah, that’s right, I was the victim, lol. I’m not like mad or anything, it was just a little wierd. I was trying to get down into the pit after taking a small break between bands, and a drunk girl started to rub up on me, then make out with my neck and generally do things that I wouldn’t consider to be valid first date behaviour, so after we couldn’t seem to get past her into the pit, we went the other way around. It’s still funny when I think about it.

I put off doing homework and getting a haircut and doing my laundry and other various responsible activities for this weekend, and it was awesome. As a result, this week is going to subsequently suck.

Je pense que c’est la vie.

If you can’t stand to walk an extra twenty feet on the sidewalk to get to class, and instead must cut across the grass to save yourself the five seconds that it would take you to go around, why the fuck are you here? Why would you come to a small liberal arts institution where challenges are to be expected, and where you would be required to put forth effort at almost everything you do, and then wimp out at the thought of having to take an extra thirteen paces in order to get to the College Center? You know what I bet it was? I bet you thought that if you didn’t cut that corner, the guy in front of you was going to get there first and snake the last two cheeseburgers, and I’ll be damned if those weren’t your treat to yourself for figuring out that you could cut an extra eighty stairs out of your daily routine by taking the elevator in the library instead of trying to surmount that monstruous obstacle that surely must be the bane of your existence: the one you call the Olin stairs. It really is a damn shame that even to get to the elevator in the library, you have to climb a small flight of stairs. If only you were handicapped, you could use the first floor entrance, and then you wouldn’t have to climb a single stair to get up to the fourth floor. It is sad that you don’t see your biggest handicap: inconsideration.

You know what? Those sidewalks are there for a reason. Cement doesn’t die when trodden upon repeatedly. Grass, however, gives way to dirt and mud, and I don’t much particularly want to be sitting in the dirt when Springtime hits and I want to read a book outside in the quad. With every unnecessary step that you take off of the cement, more green becomes brown, and you make this campus just a little bit uglier. I read an article last year in the Observer by a student that was concerned with the amount of campus that was covered by mulch, the grounds crew’s answer to the receding grassline. The amount of ground that was covered in mulch had increased a great deal from the previous year, and in the opinion of the reporter (and I share that opinion), mulch is fucking ugly. She didn’t say it quite so distastefully, but I am hot and bothered enough to feel the need to provide that emphasis. You devalue the very institution that you call home for nine months of a twelve month calendar every day and you’re not even the only one that lives here. There are over two thousand other students here, as well as faculty and staff that must also watch as you run this campus into the ground, not to mention the grounds crew, who’s hard work you are pissing away with each frugal step you take. A calorie saved is a calorie earned, I say, so enjoy them.

Why don’t you care? Why are you so selfish?

I hope that tomorrow you trip, and are forced to wipe from your face the very fruits of your labor, the filth that you create.

Or so it would seem. It’s not like I don’t look for water that I would like, I do. It’s just that when I find water that I would like, it’s apparently not mine to drink, and instead it is reserved for someone else. It wouldn’t be so bad if the water that I would like to drink didn’t wind up having a strange affinity for the people that hold daily office in my life (that’s right, this isn’t the first time this has happened). So, it appears that it is my doom to sit and watch the people around me consume the resources that I would like, and I am left dehydrated. Some even drink water that they don’t even want or like, just for the sake of quenching their thirst. Maybe this is repayment for the time I drank the water that three other people wanted and competed with me for.

For those of you that haven’t caught up yet, this isn’t about water at all.

Now, I think about what life was like before I knew what it was like to spoon, to kiss, and I miss those days. I miss the innocence and ignorance and the bliss that it gave me, not knowing what I was then and am now missing out on. I wish that I had never felt anything at all to the effect of “love,” in which my faith is waning yet again. I want so badly to forget all that burdens my memory and go back to the good old days when video games were all that got me truly excited and where I could stay in on the week-ends without anybody giving me any shit about being boring. I want to have fun on my own terms. I want to be in control of my surroundings, and I can’t right now. The problem for me isn’t what’s happening around me that causes me to feel low, it’s the fact that I know that there’s nothing that I can do about it until after graduation. If I could change scenery right now, I would have already. I have one thing to look forward to, and that is Ireland. I hope so very badly that I get to go to Ireland. Basically, my conclusion is:

Life would be so much easier if I was just dead or a toddler or something.

I would, however, still like the ability to retain the contents of my bowels. That I greatly appreciate.

Update: I was looking up the origin of the paraphrased title of this post, which I had originally learned as “water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink,” and I was interested to find that the line is actually “water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink.” It is from “Rime of the ancient Mariner,” a long poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, interestingly enough about a man who is at sea on a merchant ship that gets lost. An Albatross begins to follow the ship, and this brings them good sailing weather until, one day, the man shoots down the Albatross with his bow. The ship and the man are therefore cursed. It is a great poem, and if you have twenty minutes to spare, I highly recommend it. Upon reading the poem, I also noticed that it is also referenced by the movie Serenity, when Mal and the assassin are having their confrontation at Anara’s training camp.

The Operative: That girl will rain destruction down on you and your ship. She’s an albatross, Captain.
Mal: Way I remember it, albatross was a ship’s good luck… til some idiot killed it.
(to Inara)
Yes, I’ve read a poem. Try not to faint.

I feel like at any moment I might see the little Morton Salt girl walking around. It has rained twice in the last three days, and when it has rained the sky has absolutely thrown itself upon the ground in the harshest way possible. (For those of you that know the Morton Salt tagline, the reference earlier will now make sense. If you didn’t know, look it up) I walked to work today in a rather fickle downpour, and I was soaked when I arrived for my shift. I believe, strangely enough, that precipitation has a sort of healing power to it (especially rain), and so I am inclined to think that I am ready to start a new term free of the shadows that I have been trying to shake for too long. I feel different, although I know that I am ultimately the same person that I have always been.

Spring break was, of course, not very springly, but then again what was I to expect of the last week of February…sunshine and daisies? Fuck no. Instead I got cold dry days, and once I woke up to a snow-covered ground. Some Spring break, let me tell you. It may not have been a week of beaches, or even warm weather, but it was still a break, and a much needed one at that. I got the most done that I have ever gotten done on a single Spring break, so I am proud of myself.

Some Spring break statistics:

Number of days of break: 9
Number of episodes of Gilmore Girls watched: 59
Episode-per-day average: 6.55
Episode length on average: 43 minutes
Total time invested: 42.28 Hours
Number of times I cried: I lost count ( > 10 )

That’s not even the sad part. The sad part is that I spent a lot of time and effort catching myself up to the current season, only to find out that the next new episode will not be aired until April eleventh. WTF.

At least I’ll get Prison Break back on the twentieth.

Well, I’ve almost washed my hands of Winter term entirely, but I still have to act tomorrow. I get to intimidate Bob Lyons, throw a beer can, drop the F-bomb, and generally be a badass, for a grade. I’ve liked working with Bob on this scene, not just because the scene interests me, but because Bob is a great guy to work with. He was willing to find time in his busy schedule to meet with me on at least three occasions in order to run through the scene so that we would be prepared for it, and when we did our rehearsal a week before the final due date, we were the only pair in our half of the class that knew our scene by heart. I’m glad that Bob wants to put as much effort into this as I do. I know that if I had been paired with Eddie, we wouldn’t have even read it yet, and it’s due tomorrow.

I’m glad to see that the Wiki is progressing quickly. I hope that it gains more momentum than Harry’s did initially, so we can keep it rolling. I also hope that my frequent references to Harry’s wiki from within mine will rekindle people’s desire to maintain his, too. I really think that they both have a lot of potential to be a great wealth of both humor and information, if only to the people that maintain them.

I walked on the slough again this year. I was worried that slough-walking season had passed, leaving me no opportunities to partake in my yearly walk on the slough, but a short run of zero-degree weather for a few days made it possible for me again. So, at about three in the afternoon on Saturday, I stood out on the surface of the ice, and looked at the campus from a perspective that I don’t get often. This was the first time that I walked on the frozen slough in broad daylight.

Recently, I seem to have been having problems with my body taking on more energy than it can handle thermally. I’ve burned myself on the oven at least five times in the last week, and today I burned myself with a soldering iron while rigging up a Playstation controller to accept input from a hard DDR mat. Also, while I was making one of the solder joints, the wire snapped up off of the circuitboard and it flung liquid solder up into the corner of my eye. That was a start, let me tell you. It didn’t do any damage, so I’m grateful. I have never had anyone warn me to use eye protection whilst soldering, so that was an unexpected turn of events. However, I only burned myself with the iron once this time, which is a huge improvement over most times (just ask Stickman), so I call it a victory.

I can’t wait to be done with everything. I mean everything. I just want to live alone and have a career, already. Oh, I also want an electric mixer. You know, for cakes and stuff.

You know, I debated whether or not I should go to class today. It is the last class day of the term, and I only have two classes. French is a no-brainer; I go because I like the atmosphere and the language and because it takes little effort. Macroeceonomics, however, while easy like French, is not quite as, shall we say, entertaining. I sit in that class and answer the questions in between short naps. I thought that since we weren’t actually going to be learning any new materials, I would simply not attend. That would have been cool, except that I wouldn’t actually get any sort of a break from not going except that I might have been able to eat lunch at ten o’clock instead of eleven-thirty, since I had work from eight o’clock until nine-thirty. I decided on a compromise: I would go to class, but I was not taking any of my materials. No notebooks, no books, not even a bookag. I’m sure glad I went. No, I didn’t learn anything, but Walker and I each won Tootsie Rolls by winning a round of macroeconomics study bingo. Is it sad that I’m glad that I went to class because I got candy out of it?

I’m so glad we’re still in third fucking grade, here.

This struck me quite unexpectedly. I was wondering, occasionally (quite sparingly) when the next issue of the school’s literary magazine, Saga, would be released. I had submitted the second draft of my story Out of the White on a whim, replying to an email that they had sent out requesting submissions. As it so turns out, they selected it to be used for Saga. I’m not going to abandon my future in computers to be a writer, mind you, but I do quite appreciate that people who deal with literature and writing as a hobby or career would find my story worthy of publication. Perhaps I was on to something…

Microsoft is actually smart, for once. No, I mean that. Really. They are marketing geniuses. Nevermind the fact that they are eating money on every XBox sale, it’s not actually going to cause them any problems because they don’t have any XBoxes to sell, right? Who cares, anyway, they’re just going to make all that money back in controller sales. “Controller sales?!” you say, “Surely you’re off your rocker, mister!” I assure you that I am at least as level-headed as ever I have been before. You see, I have uncovered the secret to Microsoft’s money-making: the idiot consumer. That’s right, you, the consumer, are stupid. That’s what Microsoft must think, at any rate.

The XBox 360 controller. MSRP: $39.99

The XBox 360 controller for Windows. MSRP: $44.99

Does anybody notice anything striking about the relationship between these two controllers? Is it the same general shape, the same pearly whi–HOLY SHIT, no way. It can’t be. Ce n’est pas possible! It’s the same fucking controller. Wait, wait, there’s a difference. The “for Windows” variety of controller comes with a CD in the package with this driver on it. And you paid an extra $5. Idiot. Just think, you could have had some ice cream, or subscribed to a short trial of that internet porn site you’re always looking at the low-quality freebies on, but instead you paid extra for Microsoft to give you a CD with a copy of a freely downloadable driver so that you could use your XBox 360 controller on your PC.*

*[Ahem] Provided you’re not running Linux.

Upcoming Microsoft products:

Food
Food for your mouth [Comes with a fork]

Pen
Pen for writing [Comes with ink]

Dildo
Dildo for your anus [Comes with free share of Microsoft stock]

I think you get the idea. But, in case you don’t, I have something to offer you: the Internet for people. Who cares if it doesn’t need anything special to function?

I bet Microsoft would buy some.

…but I’m pretty sure it’s cheating. Perhaps, if you’ve ever used Firefox, you already know what I’m talking about. I’ve had this problem before, with previous releases of Firefox, and recently one of my friends has had it too: Firefox get’s “a little lazy.” It just doesn’t download the entirety of whatever file you’re trying to download. I’ve really only seen it happen for large downloads (we’re talking 300+ mBs), but aren’t those the most important? I think so, because they take the longest to fail, thereby wasting the most of my (ever-important) baking time!

Allow me to illustrate a typical day using Firefox to download large files:

Me: Hey, today seems like a good day to simultaneously download four GNU/Linux distributions, eh Firefox?
Firefox: But of course, let’s get to it! Why don’t you just queue up all of those disc images and I’ll get to work.
Me: Boy howdy, Firefox, you sure are a good sport to download these three gigs worth of linux distributions for me, especially since I probably won’t use most of them, anyway.
Firefox: Oh, think nothing of it. I’m totally accustomed to downloading things, seeing as how I’m a web browser and all.
Me: I’m going to just change focus here to my IM client and talk to some people whilst you fetch that data for me, is that okay?
Firefox: Sure thing. I’ll just flash my Download Manager’s taskbar when something finishes, got it?
Me: Got it.

— Four or five minutes later —

Me: Hey, Firefox, your Download Manager is flashing. Surely my eyes are deceiving me, you couldn’t possibly have finished any of those files yet, could you?
Firefox: You are not mistaken, I am done with a file. Look, here it is, all 243 megabytes of it.
Me: …
Firefox: What’s wrong? You’re looking at me strangely.
Me: That was supposed to be 650 megabytes.
Firefox: Are you sure? It looks like the whole thing to me.
Me: Nope, the site definitely says 650 MB. And look, the MD5 hash is wrong. Download it again, would you?
Firefox: Ok, I guess. Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you, all of the others finished in the meantime.
Me: ?!
Firefox: What? I’m quick, that’s all.
Me: Really? Because, for a second there, I thought maybe you were full of shit. Yep, you are. These files aren’t done. God damnit, I need a download manager. Hey, could you downl–wait, nevermind. Hey, Internet Explorer, can I get you to–OH MY GOD YOU JUST JAMMED A SYRINGE WITH A RUSTY NEEDLE INTO MY ARM! INTERNET EXPLORER, WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!
IExplore: Dude, you totally just got infected.
Me: To hell with both of you, I’m going outside.

I was wondering for a while why this problem never got fixed, but thinking about it now, I think they’re working more on catching up to Internet Explorer’s superior syringe-stabbing functionality.

I’m not sure that’s a W3C standard, though.

Over Christmas, I went to my old stomping ground, teh Rivertree, and saw a movie with one of the old managers there. Afterwards, Stickman came over and we shot the shit with LeFevre for a while. Turned out it was LeFevre’s turn to do the marquee. Score. So, we h4x3d the sign up real nice like.

I’m still trying to figure out how they intend to card for a movie rated PG-1337. Booyah.