Out of frustration came inspiration

So I was checking blogs and getting frustrated at Parker for not posting since Sunday, and then I realized I haven't since Sunday either. So I'm remedying that situation right now.

I did something at work today that I rarely do: work! The manager had a job he wanted done, so he e-mailed me and I got it done as far as I can tell. I think I did a decent job with it too, so I actually feel content with my work today. That's a new one.

I haven't had time yet to go to Target or Best Buy and get the Family Guy movie. If anyone's seen it yet, let me know if it's worth the trip.

The forecast for Nashville the next few days is glorious: Mostly sunny and highs of 69, 74, and 79 each of the next three days, respectively. I can actually wear jeans and a sweatshirt tomorrow night and not be sweating profusely. I'm sitting on our porch right now and I can feel the cold front coming through. Sooo nice.

So I'm still trying to figure out what to do for Katrina relief. The trips through school only cost $60 at the most, so I can definitely afford them. BUT, there's a church downtown that is taking people down every weekend for a while, and they're doing it for free. So, in theory, I could go down with them like next weekend and have Fall Break to chill or do something fun. Or, I could go down a second weekend too. So many choices, and time is quickly running out. I need to decide, and soon.

I haven't done any homework at all this week. Not a bit. I find out how I did on my speech tomorrow, though, so I will get a grade at least, and I guess the lowest anyone got on the first day was a 78, so I know I didn't completely bomb.

I'm taking the boat
keep the beast at bay
leave my olives
they don't understand
creation
greeting me in the face
grudge them not
i'll try to calm
those evil rabbits
fudge of lust
run and hide
eat the matador
and gyration.

I have no idea what that even means, and I'm not gonna go back and edit it. I just felt like typing randomly, and now that urge is over.

It's kind of odd to think that a year from now I'll be worrying about what I'm gonna do after school. I guess I could do a preemptive strike against anxiety and figure that out now. Whatever, I'm too indecisive to decide now. Plus, that would tarnish my record of procrastination.

Guys night on Saturday, I need to find a good guy movie to go to. Something decent enough, but where lots of stuff blows up. Looks like Transporter 2 may be in the lead right now, except I think some guys have already seen it, so I need to come up with a Plan B.

I love MySpace music sites.

Green Card: Touchy-Feely; Red Card: Hellen Keller

So yesterday I did the following:

Watched Hitchcock's "Rear Window" - A classic.

Watched the Gopher's beat Purdue - Also a classic, really one of the best games I've seen in quite a while.

Won 23 straight games of Free Cell - a new personal best.

Birthday dinner for Rachel at Chili's - only the second time I've been there, but still very good, I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Apples to Apples at the girls' apartment - So much fun, we're playing again tonight. Tracy and I have to settle the tie we ended with last night.

So that was my day. Not bad overall. Today has been good so far, with the Vikings winning (finally) and the Packers losing.

So I'm trying to decide if I'm going to go on a Katrina Relief trip over Fall Break. My options are:
• Slidell, LA
• Biloxi, MS
• Picayune, MS
I want to go, and I think I will go, but right now these are the only details I have on the trips at all. I could really care less which place I end up, maybe I'll just sign up for the one with the fewest people on it. I don't think it'll cost too much either, seeing as the only thing needed to reserve a spot is a $10 deposit. When they first announced these trips, I was really excited, but now my excitement has lagged. I'm going to talk to University Ministries tomorrow to see if they know anything more, and I'll hopefully have my decision made by tomorrow evening.

I don't think I have any homework due this week, so I don't plan on doing a whole lot. I do think I'm going to do a paper for NT that's not due until next week. Yes, you read that right, I might do homework further in advance than the day before it is due. This is a new concept for me, and I don't expect it to catch on anytime soon.

The Family Guy movie comes out on Tuesday. It better be funny. I'm deciding whether I want to buy it now or watch someone else's copy and wait to get it for Christmas. Actually, I have a few sisters who are still promising me birthday presents, maybe I'll drop a hint or four there.

I want some new music. I might be able to wait until the new Jamie Cullum in a few weeks. We'll see though. Wait, the "Songs Inspired by the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" releases Tuesday. Might have to pick that up.

The first new episode of The Office was hilarious. Keep it coming boys.

AMAZING BIBLE STUDIES!

Have you ever typed in a blogger address, but instead of putting blogspot, you put blogpsot? Cause every single one of those adresses leads you to this site. Good times.

My Bob Dylan speech is over now, and I think it went fairly well. I'm predicting a B, which I will be satisfied with, considering the amount of prep I put into it.

Must go to class, more updates to come later (like tomorrow).

I will try to fix you

So last night was amazing.

We got to Starwood around 6:30, which gave us plenty of time to find a spot on the lawn. If you've been to Starwood, it's an outdoor amphitheater, with reserved seating under a canopy around the stage, and then general admission on a large, open-air lawn behind the seats. We found a spot about half-way up the lawn, just left of center stage. Rilo Kiley started 15 minutes earlier than we had thought they would (7:45), and they only played about a 45 minute set. They did a great job (I think they basically played "More Adventurous"), finishing with "Portions for Foxes", my favorite song of the set.

We waited another 45 minutes or so, and then the main event: Coldplay.

They started with "Square One", which was a decent enough intro, but things really got moving when they broke into "Politik". They did an amazing job with this one live. They had a video wall behind the band that either showed some abstract/psychedelic images, or showed the band live, but usually put through one of several filters, which made it look very cool. The lighting was incredibly well done too, and spot on with the timing.

They did a nice mix of old and new stuff, which was one concern I had going in. One of the highlights of the show for me was when they played "'Til Kingdom Come." It was originally written for Johnny Cash to record, and he was all set to before he died last year. Well, being in Nashville, they felt very honored to be able to dedicate it to him and June Carter. They played it wonderfully, and then transitioned into Cash's "Ring of Fire". It was weird to hear that song played by a British pop/rock band, but it totally fit, and the crowd absolutely loved it.

They "ended" the show with "Clocks", I think, but of course they had three more songs to play, so we were happy with that. Sitting here now, I'm trying to remember the last three; I'm pretty sure it was "In My Place", Swallowed in the Sea", and I know they ended with "Fix You". When they did that big build up after the second chorus, it was so sweet, the built up the lighting and video and everything to a crescendo with "Tears stream down your face/etc..." Very cool way to end the show.

My friend Jon had a camera, and he posted his pictures here.
So yeah, that was my night. It was incredible, definitely worth the 35 bucks I paid for it, and if they came to Nashville next week I'd pay to see it again.

Simply amazing.

Good job, Joachim

The following is from an article on cnn.com concerning a man breaking the world record for watching tv the longest in a single sitting.

Joachim, who lives in Toronto but hails from Sri Lanka, now holds more than 16 Guinness records, including the longest duration balancing on one foot (76 hours, 40 minutes) and bowling for 100 hours. He does it, he says, to raise awareness of suffering children.

Do you hear that? That's right, it's impoverished children around the world praising Joachim for his sacrifice. In one united voice, they seem to cry out, "Your works shall not be forgotten, Joachim! We will tell our children's children of the man who suffered through 70 hours of According to Jim that we might feel peace and contentment."

Meh

So I had my first tests of the year this week, one each in accounting, history of recording business, and microeconomics. Coming out of the accounting test, I wasn't sure how it went. I knew that I did fine on the application portion, but the multiple choice were kind of up in the air. Well, turns out I got a 98 on that test, so I was extremely happy about that, especially after hearing all of the accounting horror stories. HisRecBus went fine, 120 MC that I don't find out my results for until Tuesday, and same with econ, which was only 20 MC, but I never really know whether I did ok on those or not. Overall, not too shabby.

Here's a dilemma: should I study more for tests to relieve stress going in, making me feel prepared, or keep cramming the night before, feeling anxious going into the test, and do just as well (at least I don't think I'd do too much better the first way)? I guess the latter has always worked for me in the past. I say change is bad.

I have to give a biographical speech Thursday on Bob Dylan. I originally wanted to do it on c. S. Lewis, but someone else had already taken him by the time the sheet got to me, so I made a split-second decision and went with Dylan. Why? I have no clue. I need to come up with an interesting perspective on his life now, so if anyone has any ideas, let me know.

Can someone please tell me I'm really stupid for wanting to see "Just Like Heaven"? And, if it's actually in a theater around you, can someone please see "Everythig is Illuminated" and tell me how good it is? That'd be great.

Second season of "The Office" starts this Tuesday, September 20, at 8:30 CST. Have I menitoned how much I love this show before? If it's getting annoying, just tell me, but I would really like to see this show get the following it deserves.

In a rare moment of politicalness, I would like to say that I think President Bush's speech last night presented some excellent ideas. I love the homesteading project, and I like that he continues to take responsibility for the federal government's failures in response, even though there's no way you could blame him for all of them. I do have a bit of a problem with the amount of money that he's talking about throwing down there. There are really 3 ways to get this money: 1. Print it up, which would have dire consequences on the entire economy and devalue the dollar to a point so far below what it has ever been. 2. Re-appropriate the funds fromother projects: This has some potential, but it would be nearly impossible to fully do, especially with the aremd forces projects in the middle east, which, contrary to popular opinion, I don't think we can just abandon. 3. Borrow the money, basically what we'll end up doing, putting us further into the debt of countries like China.

None of the solutions are ideal, and I would love to see a combination of the last two done, but I fear we'll end up going loan heavy. I mean, $200 billion is a crapload of money by any standards.

Realistically though, this event is rahter unprecedented, especially in the U. S. Sure, natural disasters take place around the world all the time, but it is an extremely rare occasion that they displace a million people, and even more rare that this happened in an industrialized nation. since the Tsunami is kind of in a league of it's own, I guess the closest comparison would be the 1999 earthquake i9n Izmit, Turkey that killed thousands more people (17k in all), but was also centralized. I guess its hard to compare the destruction from Katrina to anything else we've ever seen, now that I try and do so. I guess an unprecedented disaster requires an unprecedented response.

I just wish we didn't have to jeopardize the future to deal with the present.

Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

This is an excerpt from the above book that my roommates have to read for moral theory. The name of the chapter is "The first poisitive task of schizoanalysis":

"...But who will be able to describe the desiring-machines of each subject, what analysis will be exacting enough for this? Mozart's desiring machine? 'Raise your ass to your mouth...ah, my ass burns like fire, but what can be the meaning of that? Perhaps a turd wants to come out.... Yes, yes, turd, I know you, I see you, I feel you. What is this - is such a thing possible?'"


And that was the last thing I read before going to sleep last night. Good times.

Nothing is Sound

All right, I've got class in 15 minutes, so lets hope I have enough time to finish this....

Last night was very...interesting. I had originally planned on doing some homework and then finishing "Braveheart" at Susan's, but people ended up with too much homework, and that turned out to be a good thing. I got the rest of my birthday presents from my parents in the mail in the afternoon, which turned out to be 3-d puzzles of the Sears Tower and Venice, Italy. Well, Venice is fricking huge, so there wasn't nearly enough time for that, but I decided to start working on it. And I kept working on it for a while. Then, I decided to make beef stroganoff for me and the roomies, which turned out surprisingly well (the left-overs were good today too). Following that, more puzzle. Next on the agenda, I went to Steph's and watched a few episodes of Gilmore Girls in a vain (or vane? i can never remember) attempt to catch up before the season premiere tonight. Came back to the apartment and worked on the puzzle more, went out at midnight to buy the new Switchfoot album (which I'll comment on later), and then back to finish the Sears Tower by 12:30. Not a terrible night by any measure. Who knows what tonight will bring...

One more week until the new season of "The Office" on NBC. 8:30 CST, Tuesdays. Be there or miss out.

So yeah, I need to hear the new album a few more times to really judge it, but first impression is not too bad. Not as good as Beatiful Letdown at this point, but i didn't expect it to be. I ended up buying the DualDisc version, which wouldn't work in iTunes, and I've since come to find out that the discs are all write-protected, so you can't put them on your computer or mp3 player, let alone make copies for siblings. I have some friends with some audio equipment that might rememdy this situation though, so we'll wait and see on that.

First test was today, on the first 3 chapters of Accounting I, and it wasn't bad. The MC were a bit rough, but the problems were piece of cake, so good times. Thursday brings tests in Microeconomics and History of recording business, so we'll see, I might have to actually study tomorrow.

That's all I got... and in only 10 minutes. Plenty of time.

Ooo, later, I'm gonna post an exceprt from my roommates' text book for Moral Theory. Psycho.

Missionary Kung-Fu

Blogger is being stupid today, so I'm switching things up and posting a link to my xanga entry on here so that I don't risk losing everything I typed out. So, here you go:

Monday, September 12, 2005.

P.S. The Vikings better not suck this hard the rest of the season, or i'm gonna be piassed.

Tears stream down your face

Coldplay tickets for Sept 18, 2005 were purchased yesterday on ticketmaster by me. That sentence could have made a lot more sense if I'd worded it differently, but it's there now, so it doesn't matter.

College retreat this weekend for church. Should be a good time, I'm looking forward to it.

I've come to the conclusion that "This Side" is Nickel Creek's best album. Although I have not hear MAS, so I guess I can't say that definitively.

Work today. 11-12, 4-10. good times had by all. maybe I'll ressurrect Great American Lyricists tonight. That could be fun, eh?

I'm a twentysomething

Speaking of, new Jamie Cullum releases stateside October 11, 2005.

I'm pretty sure that I could write for quite a while right now. I'll try and spread it out over a few days to save you the effort, but here it is.

The rumors are true. I am no longer a teenager. This is so insanely odd for me to comprehend. I think of someone who's 20 as being on their way to adulthood, if they're not already there, and that this milestone is a joyous point on their journey. The problem for me is that I don't think I'm ready for that. I mean, I am in college, and, in all reality, will be completely on my own in a mere 20 months or so. I guess I always imagine adults as having desk jobs or manual labor jobs, neither of which I plan on having if I can control it. So, while many would think that this new age gives me new responsibilities and opportunities, I just see this as upping the ante in my quest to remain young. Not physically, but mentally. I'm sure you get the idea of this whole thing, so I won't keep on rambling trying to explain myself.

Yesterday was a pretty dang boring day for the most part. I got up at 8 and opened the package that my parents had sent me last week, which also had a present from my little sister in it. Then, work struck like the plague from 11-2, which wasn't terrible since I was able to watch the first season of the Cosby Show that I had opened that morning. Steph also brought me a cupcake, which was excellent. Then chilled out from 2-5, followed by work from 5-10. Around 9, a big group of my friends showed up with cake and toilet paper (don't ask). They stayed until my shift was done, and then we parted ways as I went back to the apartment and did a bit of homework. So that's what my day entailed.

My new testament class is taught by Keanu Reeves. Just an fyi.

Has it really been over a week since I posted on here? Odd.

When are the good movies gonna come out? Seriously. Oh yeah, Hitchhiker's comes out next Tuesday. You have to go into this movie thinking it will be completely ridiculous, because it will be. Mos Def does an excellent job, and once you get past the over-abundance of dolphins at the beginning, you'll love it.

Umm...yeah, that's it.