On the plus side,

I am down to one remote, pretty much.

Other stuff on the plus side: not much at all.

Wait, so how does this work?

Often times I think about life, and how cheap this all seems. I was born into an era with no great mysteries. All things are attributed to science. What is not known is already on its way to becoming clear. The people of this country...no, rather, the intellects of westernized culture have come to an understanding of most things. I agree with most of the things they say, but not all. There are things I don't get, mostly about my life, and what I am to do with it. I'm supposed to go to school for 16 years or more in order to get a job that will probably be unimportant, except in the respect that it will allow my boss to get more things, or I will be producing or taking part in the production of things that people buy. In exchange for this work that I do that allows people to get things, I am given currency that allows me too, to purchase things, the only stipulation being that in exchange for the things, I give them my currency, and the only way to replenish this currency is to perpetuate this cycle of things. Once this gets boring, I look for something more. I look for a mate which in this culture is ideally one that I take for life, and share my things with. This mate and I, we are to make one or more offspring. The number of offspring we create may or may not be up to us, depending on our level of intelligence, responsibility, belief, cosmic dice, and a lot of other factors. We are to bring these children into this world, into this culture where they too may discover all of these things that they are being allowed to have, but ultimately ending up nowhere, and just working for things all over again.

Another Short Piece of Fiction...

As Jacob Sizemore laid on his deathbed, he recounted all of the important moments of his life. His first woman, the first time he had one hundred dollars in his wallet, his first car. His first jet, his sixty-ninth automobile, his first bank, his twelfth wife. He recalled all of these things, and fondly. He had figured it all out, and now he was just waiting for the next big adventure, because after all, he had everything one could possibly desire. Jacob could never see or truly know that for every excessive possession he allowed himself, he was denying another man a fair life. He could never feel this, because his sense of happiness was so dulled by all of his things. Only the strong survive, after all. It's a crazy world, and one must cut throats to survive. Nice guys finish last, after all. He never once took time to regard those outside of his circle: a "circle" which if given physical form would have been arguably as small as his own silhouette. As he exhaled his very last breath, he saw a brilliant blinding light. The light became dimmer and dimmer at an alarming rate; it was being reflected by all of his gilded belongings.

This is a crazy world. I'm glad you're in it,

Is what he said to his quiet new friend with the long straight hair as they sat by the campfire. He looked toward the ruins of the city that stood proudly not twenty hours ago, still in disbelief over the confusion, chaos, and death that followed the events that morning. He meant what he said completely. The world had been crazy before, but it was much crazier now. Or was it? The man with the too-brown eyes who seemed to be larger than the space he occupied had put into action something horrible, but what made this any worse than a person living an arduous, troublesome life and dying without ever reaching their goals? He could not properly answer this question, but he certainly felt the current situation was more important for a few reasons. First, people see the end of unfulfilling lives every day. Second, most folks don't see the vast majority of Metro City replaced by constructs of humongous gnarled bones and grey flesh and its denizens chased down and destroyed by impossible creatures.

A Weekend In Review: More of a short piece on nothing in particular

I'm not really sure what to say here right now, so I'll just say anything and everything that comes to my mind. This weekend was overall not bad. It was even good, I did not do a whole lot. I enjoy the company of people a lot, and I enjoy the company of some more than others. I feel like I'm getting a better grasp on what kind of person I am and want to be. Also, I feel like I'm learning more about the kind of people I like to surround myself with and spend time with. No matter how well we do in life, we always have issues and things to overcome. There are always things to overcome, no matter how rich, poor, happy, or loved you are. Everyone has to make decisions, and decisions are often difficult. Some people cower away from decision making through various mediums, and they avoid decision as long as possible. That's cool with me though, because a decision will only lead to more decision making. There is no one decision we can make that will make the other decisions in life easier, as long as we do not look back in pity at the decisions we made, and wonder "if only I made the other choice." It's really all about looking forward. Looking forward and being around people who you like. I wish it could stay this way, and stay this simple, but if I'm going to fit into this culture I'll have to spend large periods of time around people who I do not want to spend time with, to make a check in order to support my lifestyle. Once I figure out how to do that blindly, I will have "gotten it."


I find some people extremely interesting. It is not a surprise that the interesting people are also relatively new.


I feel very at peace. I want to talk to someone about this good feeling.


I want to solve more mysteries about life, and what I'm doing, and mysteries of human interaction; sometimes I think it would be much easier if I could just know what anyone was thinking at any given time in order to do the most desirably reply / action at any given time, but then I wonder if that might take a lot of the magic out of life. Okay, maybe I don't want to know what people are thinking at any given time, but I just wish I had a little bit of guidance in some situations. It's rough being a clod.


There are a lot of films I want to see. A lot of films indeed.


There are five kinds of people in this world for me, right now: People I want to meet, people I want to spend more time with, people with whom I am content as far as our interactions go, people I want to see less, and people I never want to interact with.

The above statement could very well be a lie, as I am somewhat torn on the idea of not wanting to meet some people. I say this, because sometimes I feel like everyone has something interesting to contribute, and something to teach me, regardless of how vapid they may be.

Kant said that oneself and others should be treated as ends, and never as means to an end. What if people are both the means and the ends? Right now I feel as though I need to meet more people in order to find out how to interact with and read people, so people are both the means and the end.

I ate a lot of Japanese food.

I know I said this would be about a weekend in review, and it kind of is. The question about interpersonal interactions is one that has been plaguing my mind all weekend.

Also, if any of you read the post I made about the SXSW festival and the large torrent, I haven't listened to a lot of the songs. Not nearly as many as I wanted to anyway. I'm only in 'C' now. Only song #110.

A Short Comment about the SXSW Music Festival, and a Large Torrent

This is A Short Comment about the SXSW Music Festival, and a Large Torrent. A large torrent that is legal, and contains songs from many of the artists that are performing at SXSW Music Festival this year, coincidentally. The festival itself really is quite an awesome thing. You can read about it here. The torrent is cool because it's legal and free, and it is fucking huge. I downloaded it a couple of days ago, and I now find myself on song #91 by Brent Palmer. I think I'll be lucky if I make it to song #756 by Zykos, because basically





basically I have 665 more songs to listen to before I get to the end. It's cool though, because a lot of these songs are pretty awesome and most definitely from a good amount of different genres. If one was trying to start a music collection or looking for a place to get stuff to put on their iPod or iWhatever Portable Music Player they fancy without being prosecuted by the RIAA, this would be a good place to start. Especially if these people are wanting to listen to stuff they might not hear on the radio or on MTV, and things they might actually enjoy for their quality, not because their friends enjoy them (because their friends in turn happen enjoy them, and no one knows who likes what and why and most of it is actually full of suck).

Anyway, if you're interested, there is a Wired article here that you can check out.

That article in turn, links to the site where the torrents are available, which can be found here.

This is 2.6 Gigabytes of music, folks. It won't be done quickly, but if you're lucky it'll be done overnight and I think it's highly worth it. If you're looking for a Bittorrent client (How else will you download the music?), I recommend Bitcomet. Some people find the idea of torrents to be a bit daunting because they are not quite as simple as point at what you want and click it to download. It's more like "point at what you want, click to download the torrent file, and wait a few hours for the torrent to do the legwork, and then be a good neighbor to other people downloading the torrent by seeding it for a while", but once you get into it, it is not very complex.

Anyhow, this is longer than I was expecting, and I've made my way all the way down to a band called Buried at Sea. They have a 15 minute-long song in this collection that is not really my style, so I'm considering skipping it.

Just a few quick notes:

First, my week is almost over. By tonight, all the hardships of this week will have passed, and I will only have two classes tomorrow to endure. No kind of examination in either, so that is very welcome.

I was in a bad mood last night, and two things saved me. The first was nudity; my own. The second was my cell phone.

Nevermind why I was in the bad mood, the important thing here is that I was pissed off, and a little off-center, so I set my phone alarm (I usually just use the alarm on my computer in a Foobar2000 plugin called foo_scheduler), stripped down to bare skin, and got in my bed. It was probably the most comfortable sleep I've had in months. It isn't something I plan on doing regularly, but man, was it ever good. I wasn't able to sleep long, but I didn't mind. Also, the cell phone woke me up in a pretty nice way. The beeping did it. Something about that incessant beeping made it easier for me to wake up. I firmly believe that if people walked around naked more, there would be less stress about physical perfection, and people wouldn't spend as much time trying to look like what they see on TV. Also, I think if people spent more time nude, they would end up in better physical shape, because you see more of yourself more often and think "Wow, I really need to fix this shell up."

Anyway, I went to bed like that. I slept for about 4 hours, then woke up and did homework I neglected to do the night before because I was angry enough that I couldn't concentrate. The dreams were once again, quite strange. It's been a long time since I first slept, but since I only got about 4 hours of sleep I went back to bed as soon as I got home from my first class. I don't know which topics happened in which dreams, but all together I had dreams that combined all of the following in the last 14 hours or so: Transvestitism, Baltimore, Martial arts, and my friends. Apparently some of my friends went with me to a place where we could learn some martial arts. We were there accused of being transvestites and / or transsexuals. I believe the place was in Baltimore, Maryland. Anyhow, I just wanted to say those things before I forgot them. I have had some other things I've been meaning to write here, but they've taken a back seat to life that has become much more chaotic in the last few days.

A Somewhat New Desktop

I had gotten feedback from an individual that my last desktop was ugly and terrible. I didn't think so (not in the slightest, actually), but I guess this one is a little bit more neutral. I'm not really expecting feedback, as I haven't done anything except change the theme to something else that someone has already created, and added a background that once again, is not something that I have created. The two have probably been used together by some other person somewhere else in the world. Anyway, when I showed my last desktop I believe I said I would be changing it soon, so here it is.





Tekken 5 is fucking awesome.

Dream About Returning to High School

I had a dream last night that I had to go to high school to take classes on the grounds that I didn't finish my education there. I was actually going back to school with a few people, Useff included. I don't remember the other people, but they attended were friends who went to high school with me in reality as well. I walked into this Economics class, and sat next to a girl. We were all escorted by a principal, like we were new special education kids or something. It was really weird, as my high school never had a special education program. Anyway, so I sit down next to this girl and start to say something, you know, make a little quirky joke. So I start to say it to her, and she bellows at me "Can you shut the HELL up and listen to the lecture?" and I am so shocked and caught off guard that I say back to her "God what the fuck is your problem." Trouble brews, because the principal is still there, and being that we're special education students or something, this sort of thing was expected to happen. I immediately scream, saying "If you want me to apologize I'm DROPPING THIS CLASS!" The principal then asks me if I'll go outside and talk to him, and we go to the hallway and he's kind of coddling me, and telling me to be on good behavior. Then I go back inside and sit next to the same girl and she gives me this big shit-eating grin and says something to the effect of "now isn't this better?" and I just give her a shit-eating grin right back, only mine is far less genuine and if I remember correctly I'm about 5 seconds away from dropping the class anyway. That's when it ended.


Stick that in your dream analysis machine.


Actually, let me do it for you. I think the dream is about me feeling like I didn't get properly educated in high school, and that I wasted those years academically. Not that I didn't do sufficiently well in those recent times, but I guess I feel like I should have done better; like if I learned more while I was there I could have been one of the kids who went to Harvard, or Yale, or Princeton; not that I'd like to be one of them at this point, or ever. I'm happy with where I am, and what friends I have kept and just as importantly what friends I have made by being at the University of Delaware. What I mean, is that I could have been like those kids were while they were in high school with me. I was always kind of part of that crowd any way. I simply didn't devote as much of my time to independent study as they did. The dream is about me going back and picking up what information I may have neglected to absorb on my first pass through the upper levels of our public education system.

It's been a long fucking week

And it's not quite over yet. Exam in like 6 hours. I'll be glad once that's done, because it'll give me ample time to prepare for my other exams next week (which really just means me probably fucking up until the last minute, like tooling around with Xbox Media Center, as pictured below. I took that screenshot a few minutes ago and transferred it to my computer. I tell you what, the Xbox would be really fucking cool even if it didn't play...Xbox games, and just acted as an emulator for every console pretty much up until the current generation and played every kind of media file I've been able to throw at it so far. It does those things. Well.)

I should have something more substantial to say in the next few days, because there have been some things worth writing about. There always are. For instance, I meant to write a blurb about this guy I saw driving around Newark with iPod headphones on. Let me repeat: driving around Newark with iPod headphones on. What an idiot, God damn. Does he not realize that what he's doing is illegal, but more importantly quite dangerous and places him well within the "retarded motherfucker" winners circle? Christ Fuck Eureka Dog Chow. There was something else I saw this week that made me question humanity, but I cannot remember it, and that's probably for the best as I have lots more information to digest right now.

My Desktop? I'd like to find the time to find a new theme / wallpaper for this and add some stuff in March. Maybe I'll redesign this blog too. This is all based around me having the time and drive to do such things.

An Email Anomaly

I'd like to write about these emails I've been receiving for months. Since November, I have been on a mailing list for a YMCA organization in West Virginia. I'm not sure how this happened, but my guess is that someone who is supposed to be getting these newsletters had an email address that was very similar to mine. I have not bothered to write back and correct the sender, because I actually kind of enjoy getting these emails. It makes me feel kind of special, and sometimes they have documents attached to them. Sometimes, an email from the HI-Y organization makes my day, even though it is clearly not intended for me.

Another Strange And Vivid Dream

I was in Los Angeles, visiting a friend who's name I do remember, but which does not seem important enough to include in this entry. I met Prodigy and Havoc of Mobb Deep, who insisted on telling me that they were not really as hard as they seemed and had never killed, robbed, sold drugs, or any of that - it was all for entertainment's purposes. This shocked me. I also talked to some other mid 90's era rappers from the NYC area. Then, I ended up at some very high class party. I think a few really long haired dogs were there too, along with butlers and gold plates and stuff.


It was strange, for sure. I don't know what's with me and sleeping so long / late the last few days, but it needs to end.

On Internet Conversations and Lethargy

Amendment to this gripe: This is more catered toward statements being made and questions being asked on internet forums, and does not apply directly to instant messaging, as IMs are more like speaking in person, and when we speak to one another in real life, we usually do not use complete sentences in this culture / language. That's all.

First, I'd like to say a few things about the Internet, people who use the internet, and conversations that people have on the internet. It is no secret that I spend a lot of time reading things online and frequent a few internet forums / communities. I have a few problems with people who use the internet across all mediums, be they forums, chat rooms, instant messages, games, or otherwise. The largest and perhaps most easily remedied problem is punctuation. I think some punctuation is better than no punctuation at all, to begin with. If you are making a paragraph without any kind of punctuation, no one will want to read that junk. It reeks of ignorance. If you have punctuation, but you over-punctuation, that is also bad. I really do cringe when I see people ask a question with multiple question marks. When I'm searching a support forum for a question I can't answer myself, it really bothers me to see someone put a fuckton of question marks after they ask their question, as if that will make their question seem that much more urgent or like that much more of a question. Like the aforementioned lack of punctuation, this brings the writer's intelligence into question and somehow conveys to the reader an incomplete mastery of written english. It doesn't matter how good an idea you have, or how smart you are in real life; if you're asking questions on the internet with a shitload of question marks, or writing out something amazing and not using punctuation, your point is instantly invalidated because you aren't presenting it with correct formatting. I think a good comparison is, f someone was giving a eulogy in a sing-songy voice, would you take that shit seriously? If someone let the words of a powerful speech dribble out of their lips in mumbles and whispers, would it have the same impact?

Or perhaps I should ask: if someon let the words of a powerful speech dribbal out of there lips in mumbels and wispers would it have the same impact?????????????????????


Second, I feel like a zombie. I am unable to move or do anything. I don't know what took all my energy, but I want it back.

Slept All Morning (A Bad Thing). Had Weird Dreams

I had an interesting dream that made me want to sleep a lot more, and a weird one. It's like I was stuck in the dreams, as I missed my morning class which was rather important (fuck). Also, my alarm didn't go off this morning and I assume that I got up in the middle of the morning and turned it off, which I have absolutely no recollection of. Anyway, back to the dreams. The first one was very good and it felt like it could be real. Short, with only a few brief lines of dialogue between myself and a second party. Actually come to think of it, I think there was only one line of dialogue spoken by the other party, and perhaps I didn't say anything at all. I said at most 5 words. Maybe it's showing me what I need to do. The second one, however was a real There was probably some stuff in between, in fact, almost definitely, but the second dream was rather epic and had something to do with Blood Oranges. Yes, Blood Oranges. I dreamed that all Blood Oranges were supernatural, and would infect the consumer of such fruit with some sort of disease where they would get warts everywhere. It was curable, but it was still quite dangerous. Maybe it turned people into zombies if they were infected long enough. I don't quite remember, as a lot of the details are fading away. Some of the oranges were disguising themselves as regular oranges, and I had to squeeze out some juice and put it up to my skin to see if it changed to a bloody color. So, dream analysis book-reader, what do you make of this?


I feel like I've been hit by a ton of bricks. A bowl of cereal will rejuvenate my awesome.

This morning,

I was walking to class. A man in a truck drove up to me and asked me how to get to Pencader. I could not remember, so I told him "I cannot remember." I tried to remember, but still could not remember. After holding up traffic for about a minute and a half while I tried to remember, he said "that's ok man" and drove away. For a few minutes, I felt bad. Then I realized, I do not spend enough time on campus to know all of these locations and shit. It isn't like I live there.



An hour later, I returned to the thought and instantly remembered where it was. Such is life.

FUCK, THERE IS BLOOD ALL OVER THE PLACE

I WILL DO THIS ENTIRE ENTRY WITH THE KEYBOARD ON CAPS LOCK TO DENOTE THE FRUSTRATION I AM FEELING AT THE BLOOD EVERYWHERE. BLOOD IS ALL OVER THE CARPET AND SHIT BECAUSE I HIT MY RIGHT PINKY TOE ON SOMETHING EARLIER AND IT BLED A LITTLE, BUT I DIDN'T PAY IT MUCH ATTENTION. NOW, APPARENTLY IT WAS BLEEDING A LOT MORE THAN I REALIZED BECAUSE THERE ARE RED SPOTS ON THE CARPET IN A WHOLE BUNCH OF DIFFERENT PLACES, AND I'M DAMN SURE IT'S NOT FROM ME MENSTRUATING AS I DO NOT HAVE THE CORRECT BODY PARTS FOR THAT FUNCTION OF LIFE, AND THE PAIN / SMALL WOUND IN MY TOE ALSO LEAD ME TO BELIEVE THAT IS WHERE THE BLOOD IS COMING FROM. I WOULD TAKE PICTURES OF THE BLOODY TOE AND FLOOR, BUT I THINK IT WOULD BE IN POOR TASTE. BLOOD STAINS DO NOT COME OUT TOO WELL. THIS IS REALLY FUCKED UP. GOOD THING I AM COVERING THE TOE IN A BANDAID NOW, BECAUSE OTHERWISE THERE WOULD BE MORE BLOOD IN MORE PLACES. I REALLY DO NOT LIKE THIS PINKY TOE. IT'S ALWAYS BEEN AN ENCUMBRANCE TO ME. I BELIEVE USEFF HAS THE SAME PROBLEMS WITH HIS TOE. THE NAIL ON THIS TOE IS FRAGMENTED AND STUFF. I HAVE FREAK FEET.

I Need Some Antihistamines Up In This Bitch

So , it looks like I'm sick again. Lovely. I'd like to say that I think I have a problem:

Sometimes, I enjoy the feeling of being sick. I like the dull warmth in my skull. It can make me say and do weird things, and I seem to laugh more. Laughing sucks though, because it makes me cough. Coughing hurts right now. This is some kind of respiratory infection.

Anyway, enough about being sick. What's really important is a) it looks like I'm not going to this first class of the day (AT LEAST) , as it starts in 10 minutes.

b)

...

Free Xbox. Soft modded (no chip), with a 250GB Hard Drive in there now. Oh Lordy, as good as the PS2 was to hack up, it is nothing compared to this. The Xbox scene is so much more professional. The "homebrew" software on this thing is insane. It's an excellent media player, the controllers are awesome too...the S controllers anyway - the big ones are terrible and gigantic, like the fucking system. Oh God, is this thing ever huge. I cannot remember owning a bigger, more cumbersome system. But really, I'm not complaining. It's a beautiful piece of big-ass machine. For those wondering, it is highly unlikely that I will write a guide to chipless modification for this console. It is far more complex to do, and there are already decent guides for this on the internet. I would not want to write a guide, and have people complain to me that their system is totally f'ed now, because they did something wrong. Furthermore, I even less want to write a guide, and ME screw something up in the guide, and be responsible for a bunch of dead Xboxes / hard disks / people (from the potential Xbox modder going overboard on a fit of rage over screwing everything up, and it was all they really had in life. That Xbox was all they had going for them, and now it's gone.) As I see it, the PS2 thing was very simple, and there were not any very straightforward, easy, step-by-step guides on the internet - none that I had seen anyway, and especially not with pictures showing you what's up and a detailed explanation of where to get stuff and what to get.

Oh yeah, and that hard drive I mentioned? How does 40 cents per gigabyte strike you? Yeah, I thought it was a pretty good deal myself. Anyway, one must take the good with the bad. I've definitely got a little of both going right now.

Very Cool Day

Wow. A free Xbox is now soft-modded, and working perfectly. All that's left to do is get a larger hard disk for it. I guess the trade off was that I wasn't able to go out tonight because of my mother's wackinesss, but come on: Free, modded, Xbox. Attended all my classes today, and I can safely say I feel like I have a better grasp on the material than 85% of the people around me. Woo.

Edict From Heaven

A divine being desires me to have an Xbox. I am meant to modify this "x box" and make it powerful and totally sweet.