I've mentioned The Nelsons and their blog in the past, and now the second oldest son, Mitchell, has just started his own blog(located here) While reading through the first few posts, I said to myself "This guy wants to be a writer?" Then i had to tell myself he's only 16 years old. Then I realized that I wasn't much older when I started this very blog. That scares me. I've been doing this for almost four years (albeit with a 7 month break at one point.) So I decided to cut him some slack. My writing style certainly wasn't very good four years ago, and who's to say it is now? Anyway I'll be adding it to my list of blogs that I read and I wish him the best of luck.
I Do Not Condone This
It is merely an intellectual exercise.
Rules for breaking in:
1. Don't change anything. This is the most important rule. Unless you are an idiot you don;t want to get caught. The easiest way to not get caught is for them to not suspect anything is wrong. As soon as they notice something is amiss you have problems.
2. Get in and get out. Don't dawdle. The longer you are in the higher your chance of getting caught becomes. Yes, it is exciting and that's why you do it. But you'll have to get your adrenaline thrill in short bursts. You can always come back for more.
3. Get a key. This goes back to rule one. If you have to forcibly enter chances are they'll notice when they get back. Sometimes a key isn't necessary as people leave their doors unlocked all the time, but having one means you can go whenever you want.
4. Don't be seen. If you can see somebody, then they can see you. But you have to remember that just because you can't see anybody doesn't mean you can't be seen. If possible, wait until the neighbors leave for extra security.
Awesome is a small country many miles off the edge of the map. It is divided into two halves named North Awesome and South Awesome despite being split East and West. North Awesome (on the East side) is ruled by an iron fisted dictator, while South Awesome (on the West) is run on an anarcho-capitalist system with no centralized government. Every day in Awesome is Pizza Day. The chief export of Awesome is the little houses and hotels used in the board game Monopoly. The irony of the Awesome National Anthem is that the Eastern province (North Awesome) is forced to sing of the freedoms that only the Western province (South Awesome) gets to enjoy.
Have I changed? I suppose I have, I just can't notice it. I guess that's the problem with being stuck in my own observation created world; I can't see changes in the observerator. It's like an eyeball, it can see everything but itself. Don't bring up mirrors, because a reflection of something is not the thing itself, but rather a distorted image of it.
It's hard being an Evil Genius in the making. I mean world domination is such a serious goal that any villain worth his salt can't expect to achieve it without years of planning and subtle machinations. But when you're young you have all this ambition, you want to hurry up and get to the end. Sure, I could start torturing people in the basement but without an infrastructure to protect me from the repercussions what would be the use? And nobody's going to really believe that the doomsday device in the garage will work. Of course it will work, but to prove it you have to destroy everything, and then what's the point? It isn't the destruction that gives you power, it's the threat of destruction. But without a credible threat you can't get any power. I guess this is why most evil geniuses execute their plan in stages; first kill a few hundred innocents, take some hostages, keep your finger on the button, that sort of thing. Oh and kill that frakking John McClane. Don't tie him up, don't set an elaborate trap, just shoot him in the face again and again.
I think I want to write a novel. I like the double meaning of the word novel. On the one hand it's a book long story, on the other hand it's an adjective meaning quaint. you could always have a novel novel. I'm probably not the first person to think of that.
I may be crazy but I'm happy. I'd much rather be a little weird and a lot content than really normal and tired. Or stressed and confused.
You can't hide form the jinjabread man!
Be content with your lot. One cannot be first in everything. You create your own stage. The audience is waiting. Know the right moment and go for it.
I'm feeling purple today.
One of my favorite things to do is dance in public. Especially if it embarrasses somebody else.
Why are you still reading this? After all that, do you hope it will get better?
Sweeney Todd comes out the day after tomorrow. The Day After Tomorrow was not a very good movie. J-Depp will rock your face off.
My legs are really hot. Read that however you will.
My blue bunny loves My Beige Bear.
Keen observation skills have their benefits.
I like being up in the middle of the night and seeing who else is being an insomniac with me.
I've not written recently, but the urge just won't go away.
I've been home for almost a week now and things are going pretty good. Big Kevin came in for a night and it was fun seeing him again.
I got home and my classic bunk bed had been replaced by a queen size blow up bed. This isn't just an air mattress but an entire full sized bed, just filled with air. Similar to the sleep number beds, but without the number. Even though the bed is larger than most I've slept on my entire life I still hang off the edge. I have to sleep slightly diagonally on it, which isn't too bad, as I'm the only one on it.
My mother asked me if there was anything big that I wanted for Christmas and I said a pair of glasses. After searching at two other places, we finally found a pair that I really liked at Wal-Mart. They didn't even have a problem putting in lenses with no prescription.
Last night I went to the library to drop off all of the books I picked up over the course of the semester. As an Honors student, I can check out books for the entire semester instead of the typical two weeks or whatever it is. Because of this, I get books and they accumulate in my room and at the end of every semester I load up my backpack and drop them all off. I went with the intention of not getting anything else, because I would have to return it so soon. Despite my intentions I went up to the second floor where they have DVDs. I browsed through the selection seeing many that I wanted to watch, but finally settled on Hitchcock's Vertigo As I was walking to the door I spotted a green book on the new and popular shelf. It was called This is What I Did by Ann Dee Ellis. without really thinking about it I picked it up and before I knew what happened I had checked it out, in addition to the movie. AS I was walking out of the Library, I told myself that I would just have to return it with the movie without reading it, because I was leaving before it was due.
I walked back to my dorm and when I pulled out my cellphone I noticed that I had received, within two minutes of each other, a phone call and a text message. The Text was from Karol who wanted to rehearse for our Shakespeare scene, and the phone call was from “Ruth.” (Mom, you may want to stop reading here.) You may have noticed a few posts back that I mentioned talking to Claire in her car for about an hour on Sunday. This was a potential dilemma. On the one hand I needed to rehearse, as we hadn't actually done that and our scene was today. On the other hand, I wanted to see where, if anywhere, things were going with “Ruth”. I know she's nice, and I certainly find her attractive, but it is way too early to say in there's potential for something there. What can I say? I called her back, and ignored the text. She was on campus and wanted to know if I wanted my Arabic paper back.
Side story: About a week ago, I found a pink post-it note on the ground by the math building. On it was written what looks like somebody's to do list and a few lines of what is definitely not English. I picked it up and put it on my wallet. Later I showed it to Sara, thinking it may be Hebrew, which she studies. She told me it looked like Arabic and I should show it to “Ruth” (who is minoring in Arabic.) I showed it to “Ruth” and she couldn't decipher it, because the handwriting was really bad. After more pestering, she agreed to show it to her professor. I gave her the note and she told me she would get back to me.
We rejoin our main story currently in progress. She was willing to drop it off and asked what I was up to. I said I was just putting Vertigo into my DVD player (which I was,) and would she like to join me in watching it? She said that she would, and I said to myself that Shakespeare could wait. (Sorry Karol) I hadn't seen the movie in a really long time and didn't really remember what it was about. “Ruth” said she hadn't seen it before, but then she remembered that she had and that the ending was bad. I wouldn't call the ending bad, but it was certainly a bit of a shocker.
After the movie, “Ruth” left and I went to bed.
Today I met Karol before the final and we practiced our scene and it went pretty well. BTW, practice should be spelled with an 's.' After my scene I went to a local costume shop looking for a pair of nice fake glasses, but they didn't have any that were of any real quality. I stopped in at an antique shop and had a lot of fun looking at all the stuff they had.
Did I just say I enjoyed going antiquing? What is going on?
Anyway, after antiquing, I came back to my room and hung out for a while. I decided to take back the DVD and book to the library. As I was putting the DVD in my backpack, I saw that green cover again. I pulled the book out and decided to just read a little bit, besides the library is open 24 hours right now.
That was a little before eight. Two hors later I have finished it and it was good. It is written in a very particular style. Very short sentences, one line per sentence, and with the dialog written like in a playscript. I don't want to talk about the plot very much, because it is all interwoven and unfolds as you read it. I really identified with the protagonist and felt so bad for him as he struggled. Something that was really awesome was that between each part was a silhouette of various things pertaining to the story. Imagine my surprise when one of them was Mike and the Robots from Mystery Science Theater 3000.
If you know what MST3k is, you'll think that this is awesome, if you're not then you should be.
I checked and the library closed at eight tonight so I'll have to get up early to turn the book and DVD back in.
The last post was about this weekend this one is about today.
Today was cold and wet and blah. I felt much the same way. I had to wake up really early to go to my acting final where I didn't actually have to do anything because I did my scene last week. After that some of us went to IHOP and ate food and talked for a while. I then went back home and took a nap. My mother called and woke me from my nap. I played some video games and watched some tv. I then called Claire because she had sent me a message on facebook telling me to do so. I then attempted to get food at Sam's place. I've been eating Sam's place food for two and a half years now, and I'm really getting tired of it. The worst part is, there are really only so many things you can get there. They have signs that make you think they have more choices, but every time you try to get something like the special of the day, they say they don't have it. I don't understand why they have these signs if they don't have what's advertised. My temperament today has matched the weather rather well. I haven't wanted to do anything. I've also felt sick to my stomach for most of the day and Tums don't seem to be helping.
Here's a bonus, even though I was and am having a somewhat lousy day, I can't help but smile when watch this video:
Finals are gearing up for me and it's going to be tough. I've got a paper to finish for theatre history, a project for lighting and a scene for my voice class. The paper and project are due tomorrow, and the scene is Wednesday. Overall, none of them are difficult, but I'm once again having a tough time motivating myself to do anything about it.
Other than not doing finals stuff, I had a pretty good weekend. Friday night a bunch of us went to someone's apartment and played games, then we went to Ransom Canyon to look at Christmas lights. This was followed by going back to Tech and going inside the big Christmas tree they have on campus. Then we went to midnight breakfast, which was free. Saturday a smaller group o folks met together and hung out. Our numbers dwindled as the day wore on and we ended up going to see a play called The Christmas Shoes, based on the hit song. The production was well done but the script was lacking. After the play we went to someone else's apartment and watched Elf. I hadn't seen it before and it was pretty amusing. Sunday evening I went to a party at Chili's where they had a gift exchange. I ended up with a copy of The Karate Kid. After everybody left, four of us hung out for a while longer. We tried to go somewhere else and do something, but everybody was pretty tired and after everybody climbed into Claire's car, she ended up just dropping everybody off. After we got back to my car, we ended up talking for oven an hour.
While working on crew for the last play, I made an off-hand remark about how I would propose the exact minute I met the woman who's DVD collection rivaled mine. With some further thought this analogy actually works. Of course it can't just be comparable in numbers; after all while 120+ DVDs is remarkable it is hardly monumental. I'm sure there are plenty of women out there with at least that many or more. No, I'm looking for the collection that completes mine. For example I own three of the View Askewniverse films: Clerks, Clerks II, and Dogma. If I find the woman with Mallrats, Chasing Amy and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, it will be a good start. We could then purchase Jersey Girl together as an engagement gift. Love is about finding the perfect compliment. Not necessarily the exact opposite of you but someone with whom you can make the perfect right angle.
I'm back on the Twinkies. I had gone a few months without partaking, but in the past three days I've eaten probably a dozen of the little yellow, cream filled, moist sponge cakes. They were all delicious. I'm eating another one right now.
Why do I know that?
Because I draw conclusions with very little data.
I have reason to believe that my suite mate and his girlfriend have broken up. My reasons are twofold: I heard arguing and yelling from his bedroom not too long ago, and the next day there was a washcloth missing from the rack in the bathroom. This has no bearing on my life or yours, (for that matter, this blog has almost no bearing on your life) but I know it, and now so do you.
I've been struggling with life recently. It's not anything terribly explicit, but rather a lot of little things. My interactions with people, my schoolwork, my writing, and my future plans. The last two are related. Most of the schools I've found require a sample of my work. This would be fine on it's own; I have lots of work, but they usually want at least one or more full length plays. I haven't written a full length play. I'm not even sure what actually defines a full length play. Is there an approximate page length? I know two acts is considered 'normal' but an an act is only defined by an intermission. I'm not sure I have a long form play in me. There is one story idea I have, but It kind of scares me. (Both the story and the idea of making a full length play) There is another one that could benefit from being a longer play, it was my first script and it got pushed to the wayside when Stuck in a Tree popped into my head. The only trouble is I lost the original version of it, I would have to start over. There are two that I am currently working on that might end up full length, but I can't think of a second act for one, and the other causes me mental pain when I write it.
Sometimes I wish my life was a little differenter. (Yeah, I know that's not a word) I want to be insane, I want to be in jail, I want to be in love. The only problem is life is boring. We have to find the excitement in it. I have these urges to do something outrageous sometimes. The ability to stop those urges must be what we call sanity. I don't always want to be sane.
Today was the last day of Jitters, which I have been working crew for. The end of a show is always an interesting experience. It's sort of bittersweet. On the one hand, I was really tired of working on this show, but I also enjoyed the people I was working with and having something to do all the time. I did get to leave strike early because i thought I might have a concussion. Without going into to many details, I hit a batten with my face. At first I was just in pain, but the pain didn't go away, it migrated. About twenty minutes later my face no longer hurt but the back of my head did. I mentioned it to Vickie who is filling in as the TD and she told me to go home. I have since checked WebMD and it doesn't look like I have done any serious damage, but I'm still slightly afraid. The only thing anybody seems to know about concussions is that you are not supposed to go to sleep, so I'm not going to sleep. I have a bottle of Dr Pepper in the fridge and will probably drink it if I get tired. I took some ibuprofen and the pain went away for a little bit, but now it's coming back, once again in the back of my head. Right now I'm doing pretty good. Except for thinking that while I may not have a concussion, I may have done something else and now I'm on the verge of a brain aneurysm. As you may or may not know, I have a severe (and not exactly reasonable) fear of having an aneurysm. There are no symptoms to look for; one moment you're fine and the next you're dead. It doesn't make sense to be afraid of them because there's nothing you can do, but that doesn't stop me.
Side note: "but that" is only a misplaced space away from "butt hat."
This 'not going to sleep for fear of death' thing has also encouraged me to try out the 28 hour day. the 28 hour day is an interesting concept where you stay awake for 20 hours and then sleep for 8. When paced properly you are awake during the day on weekdays and up all night on the weekends. Your weekend also lasts 56 hours instead of the normal 48. For the scheduling to work out properly, I can't go to sleep until 2 o'clock tomorrow afternoon. Now I'll have lots of time to work on the things I have due tomorrow. I've been saying that since about 7 o'clock and still haven't done anything.
Sometimes I come to realize we live in a world of wonders.
Look at a mirror. YOU are seeing millions upon billions of light waves (or particles if you prefer) bouncing from any light sources in the area, off of you and everything else around you hitting, the mirror and then bouncing into your eyes. It's impossible to track, really track, all of these bouncing waves but if it were, the air would be full of tiny little lines emanating from everything.
Also, if you do a Google search on the title of this post (quotes included) you will fine nothing. (well you wouldn't have before this post, anyway) Yet there are probably over a hundred people who know that phrase and the song that goes with it. Despite what we think, you really can't find everything on the interwebs.
This is just one man's blog. You will read about my life and what happens therein. Will it change your life? No. Should you read it? Probably not.
I guess this is a good a time as any to welcome any intrepid readers that have stumbled here from facebook.
It should be noted that there is some heavy stuff that gets posted here. I should also note that this blog is about me and my outlook.
This is one of the few places where I am 100 percent honest. That's not to say that my feelings don't change.
What I wrote here three years ago is very different than what I felt three weeks ago, and that is decidedly different that what I felt three days ago.
So intrepid readers, I invite you to comb through the archives, but be warned, if we know each other you might be mentioned, I might have used a pseudonym I might not have.
Any thing on here is something that I deem worthy to posted on the netterwebs. That means it's important to me.
If something I post here bothers you that's OK. But rarely (read:never) will I edit previous posts. I say what I mean and I mean what I say.
I may not be proud of what I put out here but I mean it. If you want to talk about it go ahead, I have comment links for all of the posts, or you can just ask me about in the real world.
If it's here it's fair game for discussion.
Everything here is the intellectual property of the owner unless otherwise indicated. Steal it and I will have my posse of legal students attack you face. There is no fair use of it, just stealing. If you want to quote me, ask first.
