good day today.

season opener for the horns, they tore it up 66-7, what was really nice about the game was that it was actually shown out here on the west coast. it'll likely be the last time i see them til sometime in november, so it was nice to get my fix. it's weird watching a college game now, knowing that pretty much all of the players on the field are younger than me.

i talked to nicole today, which was the first time in forever, it wasn't for very long but it was still really nice. today was actually full of pretty good conversations, laura, lisa, annie, tara, emily, and of course bone, who remains linked despite his talk of personal dermatological issues, he gets a pass because yesterday he said i was likely the most patient person he'd ever met, made my day it did.

enjoy labor day tomorrow.

feeling: solid
thinking of: coloring
music: "august in bethany" the juliana theory

i went to a boys' school.

one of the things you learn going to a school like that, a tight-knit, private school, is how politics works, not like campaign politics where you're shaking hands and telling lies to get elected or anything like that. it's the kind of politics where you know there are certain people who aren't really fans of yours, and you even know who they are, however, you would never know it based on your actual interaction with them. when people have a problem with you, somehow you don't hear it from them, either that or you're the last person to hear about it. and if you do hear it from them, it doesn't stop there.

it's like that time a teacher overheard me say the word "ass" in the hallway. he was one of those guys that seemed to take it personally when you did something that he didn't agree with, something that upset him. i got griped out for it, which i understood, it wasn't a stellar decision on my part, and i could see how it would upset someone, and i thought that was that.

well you know how it is, that wasn't that, and i ended up on the list the next day, which i found out was for my verbal indiscretion and i ended up having to write a letter of apology for it. once more, i figure that to be the end of it. so i was a bit surprised to get a phone call at home from my wrestling coach, who never called me at home, saying that he'd heard in a meeting he was in that someone was complaining that i'd cussed out a teacher and only had to write a letter of apology for it, evidently someone wasn't finished with his blabbing. my coach just wanted to know if it was true, because it didn't sound like me, so i tell him the story, and seeing how different the truth was to what he'd heard, told me to call BS on them for spreading stuff about me that wasn't true.

i'm not bitter about it or anything, and i share that story for a couple reasons, first because i know that people have said stuff about me behind my back with regularity, people that seem to have no problem with me when i see them face to face, it's part of life and it happens to everyone, but that's the only time that i recall even having the opportunity to give someone their comeuppance over it, so i've more or less realized that there's no use getting frustrated over it or consumed with trying to clear my name, which leads to the second reason, it's happening again. i've heard from a couple different people that some are saying things about me that aren't really true and that the people talking are people who've never mentioned anything to me about it, people that are cordial to me. it's not problematic to me personally, i don't have any reason to question my own integrity and i'm not insecure enough to let it bug me, but since it's happening, it's an issue and i'm somewhat miffed by that.

the only real difference is that no one's trying to get elected.

feeling: prepared
thinking of: james
music: "pepper" butthole surfers

i watched mtv last nite.

it's not something i do very often, in fact, it's something i'd be happy to avoid altogether. i was thinking that it's mostly because, age-wise, i'm on the tail end of their target demographic, but then i thought about it for a second and realized that that's definitely not true, they expect people my age to watch.

i read a study a while ago that declared that people aren't generally considered adults until age twenty-six. i was willing to go along with that, i'm twenty-three and i have a hard time considering myself a "grown-up." i'm sure that there's nothing magical about the age of twenty-six, but regardless of the number, it shows that people realize that adolescence continues for a period of time well beyond the age of eighteen. mtv is, i think, more than a little responsible for that, mostly because they manage to co-opt the thought process of so many people by appealing to their desire to be sensorily stimulated, and idly entertained.

nate called last night, and it was good to be able to talk to him again. he's one of the people that makes me feel a little bad that i left chicago. he's doing well, said he broke his wrist, but he's doing his best with it, it's not caused him to miss any shows, he's just singing now instead of singing and playing guitar.

anyone in dallas want to come out next weekend? dfw to long beach is $169 on american, september 5-9 only.

feeling: friday-ish
thinking of: no three-day weekend
music: "someday like today" paradigm (nate's band)

so i've been reading theology again.

it's not something i try to do terribly, terribly often as it can prove to be maddening after a while. there are a few reasons why it's that way, the one that springs to mind first is that lot of it is written by people that are so much smarter than me that it's unreal. when that's the case, reading stuff like that can be intimidating, which i suspect is because essential perceptions of reality are at stake, and those carry tons of significance.

that's not what bothers me the most, however, but i guess what bothers me most sort of grows out of that. in reading stuff like that, i've noticed a tendency by many who theorize, and make no mistake, that all anyone can do when attempting theology, to see things in strictly typological terms. that is to say that people construct it in ways that are dualistic, one way (invariably their way) is the right way, and everything else stands in opposition.

don't get me wrong, not everyone does it, i just happen to run into enough of it to make me feel like it's problematic. there seems to be a dearth of humility, not even so much as an inkling of an "i could be wrong about this. . ." i almost get the impression that people think that since they're talking about God, humility is optional. it rubs me the wrong way and sort of makes me realize it's no surprise that people who profess faith are often found so irritating by those who don't.

i'll stop, i'm probably not helping.

feeling: empathetic
thinking of: dr. al nieves
music: "man in black" johnny cash

this is the last week before school starts.

not that it's of any real consequence to me, i'm not in school, taking classes or anything like that, but i do work with students so i'm still acutely aware of the school calendar. i'm in one of the places where kids still don't actually start school until after labor day, the flip side is that they don't get out for the summer til mid-june sometime. friends in texas (hi Laura!!) have been in class for a week and a half or so, friends at wheaton start class today.

so i'm thinking about school and this is the second fall where i'm not a participant in the whole thing, i mean unless you count the years before i started kindergarten, but this is the first time that i feel really aware of it. my attention was sort of dominated last year by trying to find a place to live and stuff like that, i'll talk more about that on monday i think, but right now i've got this sort of feeling that i'm missing out on something, even though i realize that thousands of students long for the day they can live through an august/september that doesn't see them start school.

other stuff, hmm. i added another link, this time to paul's website, replete with blog. paul's a good man, being a former wrestling teammate, he's one of few people who's seen me with a buzzcut, it wasn't pretty. last time i saw him, if i recall, was when we had lunch at chili's, the one at preston & lbj and that was far too long ago. yah so there's that and bone has a job interview next week, i know, his blog said so. it's in the thriving metropolis that is cedar rapids, iowa. i definitely don't envy him the destination, though i am a bit envious of where his stopover'll be, my kinda town, it is. if it all works out, he'll be doing something he wants/likes to do, and, he'll put dallas, texas in his rearview mirror, both things i figure he wants sooner than later, so i hope it shakes out well.

i think i'll go back, as soon as i can figure out what i want to study. suggestions, as always, are welcome.

feeling: vital, i've been running lately
thinking of: clothes in the dryer
music: "dear friend" charlie peacock

Wesley Willis 1963-2003

it was four or five years ago that i was first introduced to the music of Wesley Willis. my brother played the song "they threw me out of church" for me and when i first heard it, stupid would not have begun to describe my opinion of it. i told my brother that he owed me for the three minutes of my life spent listening to that song. if you're famiiar with Willis' work, you probably have a good idea about why i felt that way and you can skip the next couple of sentences describing it. Willis suffered from chronic schizophrenia and said he made music to escape from the voices in his head, voices that he said tormented him. the entire song was done on a technics keyboard, the kind you can get at wal-mart. a mere three chords made up the musical arrangement, and the lyrics consisted mostly of willis repeating "they threw me out of church, they threw me out of church" in a voice that seemed to carry a wail more than it did a tune. the song ended, as i found out all of his songs do, with him calmly saying "rock over london, rock on chicago."

before simply dismissing it, he urged me to listen to the song again, i did and was more than slightly amused, it had grown on me a little bit. i won't say that a love affair with Wesley Willis' music started there, i enjoyed it, to be sure, but it didn't. and though I enjoyed that song, and went on to hear many more of his songs, i always felt a bit weird listening to his music, like he was a sort of sideshow because of his schizophrenia, or that i was even somehow patronizing him by listening to his music and seeing humor in it, being amused by it. i equated laughing at his music, which was hilarious, with laughing at him. when i realized that i was listening to someone who truly, not just enjoyed, but loved what he did, i didn't feel so bad. i felt like i was sharing in his joy.

we live in a culture where so much of what is produced for our entertainment has this nice glossy sheen to it. a lot of work goes into giving public figures, musicians especially, these images that are fit for public consumption. handlers go to painstaking lengths to project only the image that they want us as fans to be aware of. Willis, on the other hand, oozed authenticity. he was simple, he sang about what he liked, said what he felt and did so within his ability. there was nothing fancy about him; he didn't try to do anything he couldn't, or be something he wasn't, no team of people working to proffer a caricature of him to the public.

in an industry where something like avril lavigne's handlers hiding the fact that she's dating her bass player from the public because it would detract from the image they try to produce for her is the rule, as opposed to the exception, Wesley Willis brought something that most of the rest of us could never have even dreamed of. he was truly a breath of fresh air. Wesley Willis decided and managed to be himself in an industry and even a culture where doing so is largely not allowed.

Wesley Willis died monday night, just before nine in his hometown of chicago. Wills, with his mental health struggles, was not what many would consider a talented or intelligent individual by any stretch, obviously never seriously critically acclaimed, or anything like that. i didn't know Wesley Willis or anything like that, he had bigger fans than me so i won't pretend that this is particularly sad news for me personally or anything like that, but i'm appreciative of the originality, honesty and total lack of pretense that Willis brought to what he did, i wish more people would do the same.

rock over london, rock on chicago.

i've been spoiled by mechanical solidarity.

maybe a bit of a primer is in order here, mechanical solidarity, you might recall, is a concept articulated by emile durkheim (one of the three fathers of sociology, Karl Marx and Max Weber being the other two) that describes how in certain communities people's associations are dictated more by who their neighbors are and their proximity to them than anything else. that's pretty much what college is, well was for me anyway, living on campus at a small school, the kind of community where socially, most everybody is in the same situation, going to classes, doing homework, being surrounded by familiar people, people with whom affinity is shared.

but anyways, i'm not really spoiled by it anymore, mostly because i haven't experienced it in over a year. i think that's the most difficult part of the post-college adjustment. out of college, in places where organic solidarity takes the place of mechanical solidarity, people's associations are dictated not by neighborhood connections and things like that, but more by elective affinity kind of things, workplace, clubs, church, stuff like that. what i'm getting used to is not being surrounded by people who are largely in the same situation i find myself in.

maybe i just need a roommate.

feeling: somewhat isolated
thinking of: structural-functional theory, that's not like me at all
music: "mexico" the refreshments

arg, i'm a dope.

i'm on the phone right now, with what i'm sure is a lovely lady who works for american airlines. they've always been more than helpful and right now i got a couple things going with them. what i'm focusing on right now is the ticket i'm trying to get for my dad to come out here for thanksgiving. see, there's potential for confusion because we have the same name, the only difference is in the middle initial, i have a middle name, he doesn't, whcih also means i'm not a jr., but that's neither here nor there. i'd just hate for him to get to the check-in desk and have to show them my credit card, which he most definitely wouldn't have. yah, that'd be a drag.

the other thing is sort of an aggrevation and is what had me thinking i was a dope, i bought my ticket to see katie in october a few weeks ago, thinking i was doing a pretty good job buying it on a fairly advanced deal for $335, not cheap, by any means, but definitely not anything exorbitant, so anyways, i'm logging on to AA.com to get this ticket for my dad, and i look at my netsaver matches, and that same flight to raleigh is now $198, a weaker man would have tossed his computer out the second floor window next to which it sits.

isn't this exciting? play-by-play of me making travel plans, the AA lady, her name's ellen and she seems really nice, has got me on hold now, because i can get credit for the difference between the $335 i paid and the $198 the ticket costs now and it seems as though i can apply the discount from the newly reduced fare to NC to the ticket i'm buying from dallas. that'd be sweet, so we'll see what happens.

i'll talk about other stuff now, it was a good weekend. last night was a going-away party for wes, not old roommate wes, one of the seniors who's going off to school this week, and that was nice, he's getting a good send-off and i'm excited for him. sunday was good, relaxing, and really that's what sundays are s'posed to be. this week'll be good, not too terribly busy, but it's got enough to keep me occupied.

it's nice tonite, i think i'll go outside.

feeling: somewhat industrious
thinking of: how i tore it up on my MFL predictions this week
music: "unsaid" MxPx

i'm awake.

got to see west side story last night, actually the first time i saw it on stage, i'd seen the movie before and it was pretty good, even though i'm not terribly terribly into musicals. the show was put on by middle and high school students and it was really well done, the only gripe was that the tech sucked and, at points, it was really hard to understand what was being said/sung.

i'm not sure how i feel about being awake really. used to, when saturday rolled around, looking at the back of my eyelids until sometime around noon was a relative certainty. the only thing that would usually bust that up was either football or wrestling, both of which required rising at ungodly hours, especially for a saturday morning, and in the case of wrestling, having to be at school before sunrise.

[sidebar] talking about that reminds me of the time i had to show up for weigh-ins at a tournament at seven, this place was across town, which meant i had to be up between half past five and six that morning. i weigh-in, check the brackets, see that i have a first round bye, and relax, figuring i'll have to wrestle a bit after noon. well noon rolls around and i'm not even close, so i grab a bagel or something. the hours roll by and finally i see my bout number, by this time it's almost 10PM. what's funnier is that win or lose, i had *another* match after that. so yah, i ended up winning that match, and summarily went home. it just woudn't have been worth staying til midnight.[/sidebar]

i don't really sleep in anymore though, like today i got out of bed around half past nine and today's a saturday, a day where i don't have to be anywhere til around six tonight. i don't think i could stay in bed til noon even if i wanted to. i feel like i've conditioned myself to be able to operate pretty efficiently on between six and seven hours of sleep, if i get eight or more, i feel positively useless the next day

you know how it works, you never feel useless on days you can actually afford to be useless.

feeling: surly
thinking of: grilled cheese
music: "austin song" 100 Portraits

thursday was good.

didn't really do much which was the plan to begin with, so that worked out beautifully. one thing i probly should have done that i didn't was make some phone calls, long distance ones, keep up with people and stuff. part of the trouble of living on the west coast is the whole time zone thing, all the friends i woulda called yesterday were either central (lisa, wes) or eastern (katie). katie teaches kindergarten. lisa's moving, starting school and stuff, so's wes. wes majored in trumpet, and now he's going to grad school for trumpet. that sounds funnier than it actually is.

i also wanted to call home, catch up with my dad, it's been a couple weeks since we last talked. shite at home's messed up, my mom hasn't called, and i know why she hasn't called, i'd call her, but that'd cause more problems than it'd solve. long story short, she's moved out, told my dad not to tell me because she wanted to, and i'm pretty sure she's trepidacious of the conversation that'll take place when she does tell me. i found out anyway from my brother, so i think she still doesn't know i know. my brother is allegedly married, which supposedly happened about a month ago, i'm excited for him and everything, but he's 18 and trying to start school this year. i hope it works out for him.

ironically the phone conversation that i did have yesterday was worth so much less than the time spent having it, that's probably what i get for not being proactive with the other ones.

soliciting advice through the comments link today.

feeling: good
thinking of: the weekend
music: "all there is to know" phil keaggy

day-offing it today.

new links today, just two, one is my amazon wishlist. i don't really expect anybody to get me anything, but i figure it couldn't hurt to put the thing up there for a couple of reasons. it would be pretty sweet if someone did end up getting me something, since books aren't necessarily the first thing i think to spend my money on. the other reason is that it might serve to provide some insight into me for some people who don't know me all that well. the other one is a link to some pictures, there's about twenty of them, most of them are from last summer. so there you have it i guess.

made it to the beach last night, probably for the last time this summer. this week's been pretty busy, monday was 11 hrs at work and yesterday was 12, so i'm trying to keep it simple today. my big day off rule is that i won't darken the door of the office, which unfortunately doesn't preclude errands and stuff like that. i really shouldn't complain, having a weekday off to do stuff like that beats trying to squeeze it in on a weekend with a stick.

like today i think i need to run to the grocery store, this despite the fact that i was there on sunday. it happens once in a while, i gotta go back and get some stuff i forgot, it's mostly because i don't make lists, which is to say that i don't really write much of anything down. i''ve never found it to be terribly helpful, despite the times it proves to be a slight inconvenience, mostly i've found it just serves to give me something else to do, another detail to keep up with.

i'm not the most detail oriented person.

feeling: relaxed
thinking of: rachel, in japan now
music: "kid" bouncing souls

presumptuousness bugs me.

you ever have one of those conversations that makes you consider self-immolation as a viable alternative? i've had those before, i won't say how recently the last one was, but it's got me thinking about the difficulty of communication. people throw that term around as though it was the easiest thing in the world to do, and to be honest, the concept is actually very simplistic, you tell someone what you're feeling, what you're thinking, there's not just a whole lot to it.

somewhere, however, the process gets convoluted, people get rubbed the wrong way, they get irritated, stuff like that. for some reason what we say is rarely heard by another the way it sounds in our own head. it's almost as though something gets lost in translation. we hear something other than what the person we're talking to meant and instead of making the effort to really get what the other person is saying, we find it a lot easier to simply presume that we do and then make judgements or form perceptions based on that. presumptuousness often replaces patience in the process of communication.

i wonder if people right now could even recognize patience if they saw it.

feeling: misunderstood
thinking of: the beach
music: "kite" U2

so i fell asleep on the couch last nite.

it happens every once in a while and it can be pretty maddening. i can't stay asleep the whole night when i fall asleep there, so i usually wake up around one or so and am just coherent enough to realize that i'm not in bed and that i need to go there. wouldn't want to sleep through bedtime, although i think i would hate life if i woke up one morning on the couch and realized i hadn't slept in my bed that nite, i'm pretty sure my imagination would convince myself that i hadn't slept at all, and who really needs that.

it's cloudy today, i want to go fishing.

feeling: a duller pain than yesterday
thinking of: changing the name of the blog to "the back pain chronicles"
music: "red carpet and rebellion" the distillers

so another week begins.

it actually began yesterday, but then it's all sort of arbitrary anyway. i'll let someone else argue about whether the week starts on sunday or monday. i never used to think about it that much, and i feel like i'm thinking about it now because i'm past any point where days will run together anymore. each day is pretty distinctive now, which is nice, because it keeps monotony at a minimum and i don't do real well with monotony.

monotony, that's a funny word, and it makes me think of the school cafeteria in middle school. every once in a while we'd have what were called monotony breakers which was basically just a dessert that we didn't usually have, like a funnel cake or something. the biggest actual difference was the big banner that said "monotony breaker" that went on the back cafeteria wall. nothing against funnel cakes either, but it felt weird eating them in the cafeteria at school as opposed to the fair, kinda like eating a hot dog at someplace besides the ballpark.

so anyways, i went grocery shopping yesterday and it still blows my mind how expensive that can get. i didn't even get all that much stuff and ended up dropping nearly $70. i didn't mind so much because it was the first time i could get fridge food without having to think about how long it would last in my fridge.

my back still hurts, i've been reduced to pondering the merits of icy-hot.

feeling: a dull pain
thinking of: wes, whatever happened to that guy?
music: "duane joseph" the juliana theory

my back is killing me.

it's like wisdom teeth, back pain is the kind of thing that sort of makes you realize you're old, or at least think about it if you're not. i'm sure it's nothing that's a big deal it's not a chronic deal or anything like that and on top of that i can think of a couple reasons why it's hurting, either because i slept funny last nite, or it's the delayed effect from carrying that stupid fridge up the stairs by myself.

so anyways, i'm looking at the first sentence of the last paragraph and i'm realizing that getting wisdom teeth isn't like back pain at all. wisdom teeth don't really make you realize that you're old, maybe i think that because i had enough room for mine, so i could definitely be wrong.

age is a funny thing, especially with its relationship to maturity. it's kinda sad that we're, by and large, narrow minded enough to think that age and maturity can share only a relationship of positive correlation. that is to say that we've come to believe that maturity can only increase with age, or put more finely, that only age, by nature accompanies increased maturity. that's not to say anything of our penchant to project that paradigm nearly uniformly and unequivocally. making an attempt to view maturity in other ways opens the door to admitting that we *have* to look at things subjectively, and worse yet (for many, anyways) it opens the door to ambiguity.

ambiguity serves to make a lot of us uncomfortable, we find solace in certainty and ambiguity takes away from that. it's the kind of thing that forces us to actually be thoughtful as opposed being bound by knee-jerks and broad strokes, which, ironically, we often find more comfortable. when we're locked into a perception that allows a formula or an algorithm to do our thinking for us we don't allow ourselves to be challenged by truth that we might encounter.

i've rambled long enough. next time, i'll use my legs.

feeling: melancholy
thinking of: my bench
music: "little things" bush

it was good.

i have trouble sometimes building something up in my head so much that it can never hope to live up to expectations. i'm certain i'm not the only person that does that sort of thing, and that the people that do make up much more than a small minority of the population. that happened when i saw office space for the first time, although, i think that was primarily due to the fact that the movie had been ridiculously talked up by those who'd seen it before.

luckily, it's not a problem i had this weekend, and it's usually not a problem when i get to reunite with a friend, especially one that i haven't seen in a while. duncan was here last night and i'm gonna say all the stuff you'd probly expect me to say, it was great to see him, awesome catching up, stuff like that. what dawned on me about this friendship in particular is that there's a definite ease in it, there's no pressure, no expectations, we could have sat on the couch and looked at the walls, or sat out on the back walkway while he smoked all night and not regretted a second. i thought about it some more and began to realize that that ease is present in pretty much every friendship i have, it felt nice.

the whole thing is double-edged however, because after having been here nearly a year, i don't feel like i've met anyone who can be as good a friend as any of the friends i have already. i don't know whether to feel discouraged about that, maybe because of an inability to relate to people or a fear of letting new people into my life, or if i was just terribly,terribly blessed by the people that have been in my life before. i think i've become pretty picky about it, more and more i find myself becoming increasingly stringent about the definition of the word "friend." i don't want to go as far as to say it's a quality vs. quantity sort of thing, but in ways that's what it feels like.

we'll pick up where we left off.

feeling: decompressed
thinking of: the phone
music: "untitled" social distortion

i don't use an alarm clock.

most people wonder how i manage to do that and ever wake up, but it's never really been a big issue for me. i don't go in to work until nine, and i'm usually awake and out of bed by seven. today was an exception, i didn't get out of bed til a bit after half past seven.

i had a discussion with my brother about it once, and he arrived at the conclusion that since i woke up at more or less the same time every day, despite the fact that i didn't rely on an alarm clock, that i was sleep deprived. that didn't make any sense to me because it wasn't like a forced, involuntary action on my part, at least it didn't ever feel that way. when i wake up, i'm usually rather coherent, and not feeling terrible or anything like that.

screw, screw the network exec that took gloria calzada off the air.

feeling: a bit sore
thinking of: dying days of summer
music: "luckenbach, texas" willie nelson and waylon jennings

i'm sort of jealous.

dunx is on his way out, left this morning from dallas. he's headed back to portland for the start of school and should be here tomorrow night. that'll be sweet, i haven't seen him since may. so to the point, the jealousy is mostly tounge in cheek. thinking of dunx driving out here from dallas reminded me that it's been nearly a year since i've really been able to take a road trip, a year since i was able to get in the car and spend a whole day driving. there was that day in january when i went to fresno, but even that was just four hours each way, and if you can make it there and back in a day, then it's not really a road trip.

mostly it has to do with where i live and its proximity to any place i'd really have a reason to go. living in chicago, the trip to dallas was fourteen hours driving, which was long enough to be a drain, but short enough to get done in just a solid day of driving. out here, i'm at least a two day drive from anyplace i'd really have any reason to go, at least at this point. on top of that, and i'm sure this is due to how i've socialized myself to perceive road trips, but for some reason, i feel like i have to be surrounded by miles and miles of rolling wheatfields. maybe it's not the wheatfields at all, but there's a qualitatively different feel driving through the heartland compared to driving through the southwest.

the fallout from that is that i have to fly everywhere now. it's not so bad, i don't mind flying really, although i'm pretty sure i don't enjoy it either. i've also figured out that the long beach airport is pretty much the best airport in the entire country as far as avoiding typical "airport hassle," so if i have to fly semi-regularly, i've got a pretty convenient airport to do it out of. i do wish i could make the drive home or to chicago or someplace in a day as opposed to two though. as far as i can see that's been the biggest drawback to being here, well that and being away from the people i'd be driving to see.

other than that today was a bit adventuresome. i went to wal mart and finally got a new fridge. it's a mini one, but big enough to suit me. i didn't want to go all out and get a brand new full size one, and i definitely wasn't going the resale route at all again. funny thing though, as i was trying to load the merch into my lil car i was petitioned for gas money by a couple of women on their way to bakersfield. one of them said her husband had beat her up and they were getting away. it was pretty cool, they were driving a truck and offered to haul my fridge so i wouldn't have to fight with my back seat to get it in, or subsequently out.

i wonder about all that, because i know i'm a pretty trusting guy, ok very trusting. and i put myself in a position where i definitely could have been taken advantage of. some would say that because i did help them then i *did* get taken advantage of.

one day we'll talk about fundamental human nature, me and you.

feeling: full of anticipation and recharged, day off and all
thinking of: dunx, safe travel for him
music: "just don't want coffee" caedmon's call

i'm a pushover.

bone made no promise of ceasing the talk about shaving his back and he made his way into the links section anyway. i'm not sure how i rationalized that, we go back quite a ways. i think he'd link me even if i talked about shaving my back. it's either that or the realization that he might very well be the only person with whom i can talk about the heavy homosexual undertones in the teenage mutant ninja turtles.

here's the text of that conversation:
alceste1103: if i were a ninja turtle - who would i be?
ricv56: raphael
alceste1103: f**k
alceste1103: why?
ricv56: ???
alceste1103: cause man, chicks don't like raphael, they like michelangelo
ricv56: i dunno that you fit him as much as you just don't seem to fit any of the other ones
alceste1103: and i'm not michelangelo, i'm raphael
ricv56: michaelangelo is a sack of crap
alceste1103: i think he's gay
ricv56: i think he's the only one that's not
alceste1103: michelangelo?
ricv56: raphael
alceste1103: whew
ricv56: i thought you were saying you thought raphael was gay
alceste1103: nope
ricv56: good
ricv56: i think he's the only solid hetero in the bunch
alceste1103: what about splinter? pederast?
ricv56: likely
ricv56: a four hundred year old rat cohabitating in a sewer (read:underground) with four teenagers
alceste1103: so what? it's all a homosexual allegory?
ricv56: don't even get me started on shredder, krang, bebop and rocksteady
alceste1103: oh no
alceste1103: oh, you have to explain this to me
ricv56: a warthog and a rhinoceros? if that's not code for beastiality, i don't know what is
alceste1103: hmm
alceste1103: that's pretty thin
ricv56: and a disembodied brain lives in a man's crotch co-leading an alliance of evil with an insecure ex samurai who keeps his face covered?
alceste1103: so?
ricv56: that just screams S&M
alceste1103: g*dd*mn, some days i get down on my knees and thank god i know you

i added a few other links, mostly of personal interest, stuff like c.s. lewis, john wesley, and jim goad. i bet that's the first time those three guys have ever been mentioned in the same sentence. it's goad that's the wildcard there. lewis gives us "mere christianity", wesley, "a plain account of christian perfection" and from goad we get "the redneck manifesto." i was surprised by goad's book, i first saw it in a borders in wheaton, and expected, as the title might suggest, it to be written from a total right-wing "we're under attack" point of view, probably solely in "rant" style. i picked it up and, after a few pages, knew i had to get it. goad does rant, it's probably what he does best, but his book was ridiculously well-researched. i read it on a flight from LA to austin, and finished it quicker than i can remember finishing anything else of comparable length. the book and his website are definitely not for kids, however.

had a really good conversation with laura last night, definitely the highlight of the day. other than that, i worked on cleaning up my office and did some studying. school's gonna start here in about three weeks, which means i'll have lil kids on tuesday afternoons again and i won't have time to organize myself or do much study. future education is definitely weighing on the brain now.

i'm pretty stoked about lunch the sunday before christmas now.

feeling: peaceful
thinking of: 709 Michigan St. 8B, Wheaton, IL 60187
music: "wishlist" pearl jam

i have two boxes of crayons.

the big box, the box of 64. i hear rumors that crayola's made an even bigger box than that, one with 96 in it, but i think 96 crayons would definitely overwhelm me. one box is in my office, the other one in my living room. i feel like they help to keep me centered despite the fact that their value is primarly symbolic in that i don't really feel like they add anything substantial to my life. i mean i don't spend just a whole lot of time coloring or anything like that. i usually only use them when i'm making something for someone else. i don't even really have to use them for them to be of value, one look usually provides a pretty solid reminder of times that were really simple, and anyone that knows me knows that i value simplicity quite a bit.

so anyways, today's tuesday and there's not just a whole lot on the agenda today. i need to clean up my office, which is a mess and has been for a while. my desk is pretty buried. dunx should be here later this week on his way to portland, it'll be good to see him. bone is going back to dallas in a couple days and the packing seems to be moving along for him, which is impressive.

in need of more socks.

feeling: pedestrian
thinking of: Laura, she's amazing, and i hope she has a better day today than she did yesterday
music: "i broke out your windshield" wesley willis

Jonas Ortiz--September 20, 1982-August 11, 1999

four years ago today. four years and it's so ridiculously difficult for me to believe that so much time has passed since then. that was a messed up day. the story actually started about a week before that, when he got shot. that was on my birthday, i remember getting home that night, being there for a few minutes and then getting the phone call and finding out what had happened. pretty much immediately, we took off for the hospital. from the get, it didn't look good, he'd been hit in the head, but he hung on for just over a week before he crossed over.

i realize that it's largely trite and cliche to talk about how close we were and all the other stuff that comes with death. the questions like "why him?" and the statements like "he was so young, just 16", stuff like that. i still don't really know why, and i suspect that questions like that are never answered to anyone's satisfaction in lifetimes that we can perceive. they've never been answered to my satisfaction, that's for sure.

what's humbling, however, is the realization that my satisfaction is not of paramount, or even peripheral significance. realistically, there is pain, and i had to get used to living without someone close to me, that wasn't easy and it took easily a year before i got over that. what blew my mind was that that coincided with the point where i realized that reality for me and reality for jonas was so radically different. c.s. lewis weighs in, you knew he would, saying

"a man's dying is more the survivor's affair than his own."

those questions and concerns and doubts that i have don't matter, not because they're trivial, but because they don't matter to Jonas, not anymore anyway.

rest in peace, Jonas, and know that you're missed.

feeling: joyful
thinking of: heaven
music: "see you in heaven" guardian; "hold me jesus" rich mullins; "my name is jonas" weezer

i's back

i wasn't really gone that long, not even 24 hours. it was a good weekend though, i had five jr. high kids here on friday for a sleep over. that was fun, but i don't think i'll be doing anything like that again for a little while to come. the lights finally went out around 3AM, after which i summarily fell asleep. evidently, however, they didn't actually make it to sleep until a few hours after that. you know how it is, all of them were afraid of being the first one asleep. i wake up around half past seven that morning, one of the kids is still up, hasn't been to sleep at all, hadn't been medicated, i'm convinced he could go a week without sleep if he had to. so anyways i take him on a walk with me to the donut shop to get donuts for everyone. that was definitely the move, load them up with sugar before i take them home to their parents, which took place between half past ten and eleven.

so anyways on saturday i went down to san diego and spent the night at a cabin down there with some folks from my church. on the way home, i was pondering examining it as an exercise in self-examination, that and getting a mean driver tan. so anyways, armed with the ample time that traffic and distance the drive from san diego to long beach combine to provide i thought about how much i've decreased in extravertedness over the past five years or so. i'm still a mild extravert, which says, more than anything, how extraverted i was then. i know i've toned down a lot since about the time i graduated high school, and i wonder how much of that is due to the decision i made to be more restrained about stuff like that and how much is due to me becoming more self-absorbed or something like that. like this weekend, i found myself hesitant to go before i left, but coming back, i was so glad i'd gone. i found myself feeing the same way after similar stuff not long after i moved out here. there'd be some sort of event, which in the past, i never would have even given a second thought to, i would have just gone, but then i'd really just not want to go, not even that so much as just feel like leaving my place wasn't worth the effort. without exception, on the way home i'd be so glad i'd gone, and couldn't believe that i'd contemplated skipping it to stay home. this weekend was exactly like that. it wasn't that i didn't want to go, more than anything i was contemplating the challenge it posed to my comfort zone, the challenge wasn't even substantial, and it proved to be more than worth it.

denis leary's getting roasted on comedy central.

feeling: satisfied
thinking of: getting a bike
music: "time brings change" MxPx

jorge ramos is my hero.

i s'pose i shouldn't really leave it at that, jorge ramos calls soccer games on radio unica, that's in spanish. anyways, i was talking to my dad this past weekend, and the gold cup had just finished, mexico beat brasil for the championship in sudden-death overtime and ramos went nuts on the call. i didn't hear it, my dad did, so he told me about it. the goal was scored, and he went on for a solid two mintues after that, ending by saying "SOMOS CAMPEONES CABRONES!!!" for comparison, if a guy calling a game in english said the english equivalent to that, he'd be reprimanded and suspended by the fcc. i was pretty disappointed that i missed it, but lucky for me i found a clip of it on the web. it was awesome, and now he says it whenever i turn my computer on.

quite a few people are moving, different circumstances for them all, but in any case, moving can be a royal pain, regardless of the circumstances. i remember moving out here. actually moving out here wasn't so bad, mostly because my stuff was already in boxes from having moved from illinois three months before. i didn't have a room anymore, so i lived in the living room, and i didn't really have any place to unload my stuff, so it mostly stayed in boxes in the garage. i didn't have just a whole lot of stuff, so pretty much everything i owned was jammed into the back of my car. bone's moving, and he started a blog, i'll link to it if he says it's ok and if he stops talking about shaving his back.

i won't write tomorrow, mostly because i won't be here, so no update.
if i'm not back by sunday avenge my death.

feeling: conflicted
thinking of: football, though i don't know why
music: "cheating at solitaire" mike ness

i save everything.

it's quite ridiculous actually. i've got stuff that no sane person would even consider keeping. report cards from seventh grade, notes from middle school. i can't bring myself to erase even the most mundane emails from my inbox. it's silly really, i seem to be quite a sentimental fool. maybe that's why i started doing this, sort of to make things easier. i've always had a pretty good memory, but it's not necessarily comprehensive, i'll remember the most remote details about an event, but some of the other stuff will get lost on me over time, so i figured it might be a good idea to keep track of stuff like that.

the discipline thing was also a bit appealing to me, in that it's something i've never been able to master as far as writing goes. it's always been very sporadic, i'd write myself an email about something, jot something down on a random piece of paper, but nothing that was ever consistent. i'd always write that off to being a trait of my personality. i'm ENFP, and the kind of person that tends to lose interest in stuff that's not immediate, or stuff that i don't feel is meaningful, and after a while, it seems that whatever it is i write ceases to be meaningful. so i'm sort of working on how to effectively integrate the quest for meaning with the desire to remain self-disciplined.

i think it helps that i've realized that i don't really have to say anything revolutionary every time i decide to write, which is how i felt before. i was sort of inspired by a quote from c.s. lewis he says

even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

that's the quote that inspired the title i use. i'm not saying anything that's original really, and it kind of amuses me when people seek to be original for its own sake. nothing i say really matters inasmuch as nothing i say is anything that someone hasn't already thought of, and as long as i realize that all i can do is be honest. that's helpful.

so anyways, this week is almost over, and i'd be lying if i said i wasn't happy about that. it's been good, but really long, a couple of 12 hour days, but it's being managed. i was pretty mentally prepared for this week, and i knew it would be busy, which definitely helped. technically it was my day off, so i stayed home during the day, ran an errand, finally made it to the post office to send beth her package, so hopefully she'll get it by saturday. i'm stoked about that. other than that, katie called today, that was cool, all the stuff for going out there is squared away now which is nice. now i definitely have something to look forward to.

i added a "comment" link today, someone humor me and comment so i can see if it works. it'd also be pretty sweet if anyone actually had something to say, but i won't push it. formatting's been a bit of an issue too, when i open this page, it gets cut off, but then if i restore it down and then maximize it again, the whole page shows up. is that happening for anyone else?

leaving, before i wear out my welcome.

feeling: a bit tired
thinking of: beth, hoping she can get to sleep
music: "black and blue" rancid

i need to go grocery shopping.

shopping is a weird thing for me, partly because i live alone and partly because my refrigerator is nearly completely useless. i get stuff and if i don't eat it within a few days, it goes bad in my fridge. i can't really get frozen food, because my freezer doesn't freeze anything, and since i'm the only one here, i can't really count on food getting consumed very quickly because i really don't eat just a whole lot, so a lot of stuff just stays in there. so anyways, whenever i go grocery shopping, i walk the fine line between getting too much food, and not getting enough and having to go to the supermarket again within the next few days.

maybe this wouldn't be a problem if i hadn't gotten my fridge from a second-hand store.

feeling: ready
thinking of: today
music: "never for nothing" margaret becker

happy tuesday.

it is tuesday, isn't it? i kinda feel like it should be thursday since i was at work til like nine last night, and the only day that usually happens is wednesday. i have thursdays off, so i get a pretty good chance to recover after a 12 hour day. this week, however, will be full of days like that because of VBS. hopefully i can get away for a few hours in the afternoon, so not every day is so long, if i don't i'll be dead by this time next week, and who really wants that?

i think i settled on a flight for my vacation in october. i'm sort of torn, because if i fly out of LA as opposed to long beach it'll be cheaper, but the convenience that long beach offers is almost worth the extra money. the airport in LA is 45 mins-an hour from here, and the one in long beach is like ten mins from here, and realistically, the savings of flying out of LA would be negated by the cost of a shuttle or taxi to the airport. so i guess that makes my decision for me. i talked to katie last nite tho and pretty much everything seems to be a go. the only thing i'm waiting on is to figure out if she gets columbus day off or not.

ashley IMed me yesterday while i was at work and said she read here, that was really sweet of her. she's definitely on the list of people i don't talk to enough. so today i think i gotta head to the post office today too, sending a package out. i figure i better send it too, because i got called a ho-bag for not sending it.

i'm not sure i want to be a ho-bag.

feeling: pretty good
thinking of: what fabulous guys me and bone are
music: "the moshing floor" steve taylor

i have some pretty sweet friends.

at least i didn't get taken roller-skating this year. that was just awful, i dunno whose idea it was that time but that was the second worst birthday i ever had. i mean seriously, who takes someone to a skating rink for their 21st birthday? i mean it'd be one thing if it was a skating rink that a bunch of outlaw bikers hung out at or something. lisa called yesterday and we talked about that and how the same thing happened to her for her 18th birthday. i was at that one too and it was so awful it was actually pretty hilarious.

i got a kazoo yesterday, but that was just coincidence, and not for my birthday or anything. it's pretty sweet though. after church some of my kids took me to lunch, that was pretty sweet

bone called this morning, that was pretty awesome of him. he's going back to dallas next week, and i'm hoping that it's just a temporary arrangement for him, which i'm pretty sure he's hoping himself. weird stuff's been happening back home, actually for a pretty long time, but it's all coming to a head just here lately. getting there in december will definitely be different, i'm actually wondering if it would be such a good idea to be there over the holiday at all, as opposed to just the weekend before it. we'll see.

tell someone you appreciate how you feel about them today.

feeling: jagged
thinking of: annie, she's in Mexico right now
music: "jagged" old 97s

yah, so today's my birthday.

i'm 23 today and it feels about like 22. i have a scrape on my right leg and a bruise on my back, both from softball yesterday, but other than that i'm not in any real physical pain so i don't feel real old or anything like that. that's kinda funny because i remember when i was a little kid, like five or six that it'd be the year 2000 when i turned 20 and that i'd never live to be that old. when my dad was my age, i was three, and when my mom was 23, i was five.

other than that, i'm trying to book a flight for vacation in october, i'm visiting katie, she teaches kindergraten in north carolina, raleigh, to be exact. it'll be cool to see her, i haven't since graduation which was well over a year ago. so far i haven't found anything cheaper than $335, and that's on american. i looked at southwest and they were a hundred dollars more expensive, which was puzzling. i guess $335 isn't terrible, but my tickets to chicago last spring were less than $200, on american no less, so i'm thinking i pretty much hit the jackpot that time.

trying not to be busy today.

feeling: contemplative
thinking of: august 3-11 1999
music: "at the moment" stavesacre

i love my couch, i probly should have spent all of last night on it.

at least my apartment is clean. i've noticed that only seems to happen every once in a while. it's like the book of judges, you know from the bible. what would happen there is the israelites would get really really bad, disobeying God, worshipping idols, dirty, as it were, and then right as they were at their lowest low, God would send a judge to bail them out, clean them up, as it were. my place is like that, it starts off ok, then it gets dirtier and dirtier before i finally decide to fix it, clean it up. it'll gradually get worse until i decide to clean it again. i even mopped the kitchen floor.

yah so it's saturday, not really action packed, but that's totally ok with me. soccer on tv, the mexican league starts back up today, no big upsets this week, at least i don't think there will be, we'll see tho. the big deal today is that chivas are playing the MLS all-stars, i figure that means absolutely nothing to most of you reading this (does *anybody* read this?) but that's never happened before, should be exciting. other than that, i got softball today, it'll be the last chance i get to play. our team's terrible, maybe we'll win today, but then that'd ruin our perfect record. at least it's a nice day outside.

tomorrow's a big day, if you forgot what it is, shame, shame on you :-)

feeling: sort of useless
thinking of: why i can't figure out what HTML code for navy blue is.
music: "love, salvation, the fear of death", sixpence

i actually feel pretty rested today.

it's nice, a good night's sleep, i'd almost forgotten what it was like. the reverend horton heat show at the house of blues in anahiem is sold out, which is a drag. their shows are the best live shows i've *ever* been to, and i haven't caught one in a little over two years. the last time i saw them was at the metro in chicago, great show. funny story, we got lost on the way home from there, stayed on the 290 too long and ended up in BFE before finding north avenue and taking it all the way to wheaton. when we got back around four that morning, the house was locked, which was the first and only time it'd been locked that entire summer.

good times.

not much time, i should probably be off in a bit. happy birthday to liz.

feeling: well-rested
thinking of: link
music: "no cigar", millencolin