Author: briancollapsing

yes i know what day it is. what of it? it only matters if there’s someone you’re pining after, in which case you’re in the frustrated, angstful bin; or if you have someone you love, in which case you’re in the do something sappy bin. i don’t really fit either. exactly. a little bit of both, actually. i’m not really at liberty to discuss it.

wanna make out?

honestly i feel fine today. my valentine got her valentine in the mail and loved it. as for someone close by to actually celebrate the occasion with… well i’m over it for now. i had a nice lunch with a new friend (one of many jen’s in my world) and just now spent a few minutes screaming at maximum volume along with a well-cranked stereo belting out “grace car part one” (by braid, for non-fans). i love my roommate because he is willing to join me in just that sort of foolishness. we’re not talking a loud sing-a-long here. we’re talking full on screaming. good stuff.

“this one’s for all you lovers out there…” yeah, i saw back to the future this weekend on TNT and it made my day. did you know it’s coming out on DVD in the near future? shit yeah.

happy valentines day.

just so everyone knows, i make no claim to be on the forefront of musical knowledge. my songs of the week are probably old news to the intense followers of new music. i’d see them not as an attempt to contribute to the cutting edge though. they’re what i’ve been listening to a lot lately, which is often a little lagging, i’ll be the first to admit. but i still like to share anyway.

lately: sigur ros. i finally bought this last weekend and it was a wise, wise decision. a few weeks ago when i only had a few songs of theirs on the ol’ laptop, giving them a test-drive if you will, i told my roommate josh while one of their songs was playing that it was so good i didn’t just like the song, i wanted to be the song, it was so astonishingly beautiful and good. anyway, i’m no professional critic but how could you disagree that staralfur is just a wonderful, wonderful song.

so that’s that and back to work for now.

just to put your fears to rest, all that studying (i.e. not very much) paid the bills. that test was SO easy. i finished and just started looking around the room and thinking about how cute a lady my professor is, and how cute the girl sitting in front of me was. yeah, i’m a big dork. but take that, anthro test. in case you were wondering from before, the (condensed) three postulates of natural selection are 1) competition for limited resources; 2) random variability within species; and 3) variability is heritable. you learn something everyday, don’t you.

and the radio show tonight went over fine too, thanks for asking. of course, you probably knew how great it was because you were listening. i liked when i played coalesce and talked about how i might get killed when i see them live april 7th. i don’t think that’d be such a bad way to go though, honestly.

speaking of monkeys — i got a valentine’s card from my mom, who cracks me up sometimes. inside? it says “you’re the champ”, and has a picture of a monkey in boxers’ shorts, a boxer’s robe, with boxing gloves hanging around it’s neck, and with its hands clamped above its head, smiling gleefully. best thing i ever saw. i cut it out and put it up on my wall next to my desk, so that everyone will always know that yes, i am the champ.

thanks mom.

still no valentine. well, no valentine that i can actually see on valentines day. my sensational friend who happens to be in italy said she’d be my valentine even though she was away, and i really like her, so at least there’s something. and i have an anthropology midterm today, that’s something too!

r-selected species are those that produce a very large number of offspring as a means to pass on their genes successfully. like insects. k-selected species are those that invest very heavily in a small number of offspring as a means to pass theirs on. orangutans are k-selected species. see, we’re learning!

there’s something much more important that i need to learn though — i don’t know if anyone else saw this, but as part of my super-bowl commercial-watching for advertising class, afterward i saw a commercial for i believe maybe 10-10-220 (calls up to 20 minutes for only a buck?!) with mother-loving ALF. that’s right, the fuzzy alien guy. best thing i ever saw. my question to you blog-reading internet experts: now that adcritic.com is no more, where do i go to download commercials? i want to watch this alf commercial over and over again. something about his voice, i’m just drawn to it. he’s so self-confident and yet laid-back at the same time. the rodney dangerfield of the rest of the universe. please help me in my quest.

sorry i didn’t post yesterday; i was busy learning about how there are bugs with hooks in their front legs that, after they copulate with lady-bugs (not the ladybugs, just bugs that are fine ladies), basically just stay latched on to these ladies for hours and hours afterward, riding them around, so no other dudes can hop on their chosen hoes after they do and decrease the first guy’s chance of fathering children. this is known as mate-guarding. i tell ya, nature is so weird.

mayhaps i’ll be back later. mayhaps i should get back to studying — the three postulates of darwin’s theory of natural selection are . . .

let me tell you a little saturday night story. not the story i would have liked to have told after last night; not the story of my expectations being realized in every detail, and everything going off without a hitch. definitely not that. but not a bad story all the same. it had its highs and lows and its pleasant surprises, so we can’t be to picky.

where to begin? well how about with the first hour of our prevalentines party bringing in a maximum of maybe two or three guests that weren’t either residents of this apartment or co-hosts of the party. no, how about expanding that more generally to include the whole night which brought in the least amount of people of any party we’ve ever had and might barely even deserve the term “party” as college students are given to understand it. it’s safe to say it was more or less a flop. but what can you do. there were a lot of other parties last night. bigger better parties. so it goes. i’m not bitter, honest.

let’s move on. some people did come, and it wasn’t all bad. for example, one girl came and we ended up going into my bedroom and sitting in front of my bookcase and talking about books and reading and eastern religions and i have to say that was a high point. a pleasant surprise. she said she wanted to raid my library and i gave her my phone number — we’ll see if she ever uses it, but if not she was still very nice. another interesting point was there being 2 out of maybe 12 guests who went by “jen”, especially since i had spent the whole prior evening with another jen. these two local jens were also so good as to stay at our party for a while and make it feel like less of a failure. and they were both good people. plus freshman-jen brought a friend that used to deliver frozen foods in the neighborhood i grew up in back in illinois (mmm, schwan’s ice cream bars…) who even remembered delivering on the street i lived on. that blew my mind.

so at about 3, when the party had pared down to a tidy 8 or 9, junior-jen and two of her friends decided it was time to go to IHOP, and so three of us went with them (one being the all-important non-drinking car-owning friend whom we owe our gratitude). that turned out to be a lot of fun and probably the highlight of the night. slightly-buzzed conversation over pancakes (or in my cases fried appetizers — the admitted mozzarella stick/chicken finger junkie) at 4 in the morning really can’t help but be funny. i remember using the word “hoist” for some reason which prompted the comment “dude…words are dope,” which pretty much summed up our appreciation for the variety of our colorful english language in a succinct four words. a true and profound statement, even the next day. words are pretty dope.

and sure, i didn’t get to bed until 5:30am. sure, i didn’t find anything close to a valentine despite my commitment to do so. sure, it was a party so underattended i even told my friend spencer at one point, “if this wan’t my party, even i’d leave right now.” but it was still a good night. maybe i’ll just have to let this february 14th drop off my radar. or rally in the home stretch here and make something happen…but let’s not kid ourselves. chances are strong that i will spend the late evening on thursday watching a movie that reminds me of what i don’t have (i’m leaning toward reality bites i think), and thinking of someone that i can’t have. at least not right now.

so it goes.

what a good weekend this is turning out to be. i mean, as we speak, my socks are being washed by some sophisticated modern machinery, and soon they’ll be all fresh and clean! that’s terrific.

no, but i really have had a great time since so far. met up with jen plus three yesterday afternoon (the plus three were really three of her friends, in this case) and had a smashing time. i picked up a cave in cd at amoeba for only five bucks, which was a great find i thought. afterward we got some tasty chinese food, then had some drinks while making fun of the olympics opening ceremony and how it would suck to live in any other country — outstanding. later we went to a cool little bar in hollywood for a few more. i had a fantastic time. jen & friends are good people. great even.

most importantly, i didn’t over-do it, because i’ve got a prevalentines party to put on here tonight, and i can’t be feeling bad going into that. no sir. this will be a night to match the last one, only with less olympics and more women, i’d like to think.

that’s right, look out — i’m on the prowl. who needs a valentine?

thank christ it’s friday. usually i don’t spend my whole week thinking “if i can just get through til the weekend…” because that’s not really my style. but this week wasn’t too great with our grand defeat, and this weekend should be pretty worthwhile, so i’m feeling good now that it’s time to get it going.

this is quite an interjection, but in my anthropology discussion we watched a video about mating from PBS, and our professor was in it for a little bit about halfway through. i don’t know if i’ve ever had that weird feeling of “hey, i hear that person talk in person all the time, and now she’s talking at me from a television.” it was weird because she sounded exactly the same. i don’t know why that made it weird though. what am i talking about here?

anyway, that’s all over now. it’s friday and time to go on an adventure. who wants to go for a fun friday afternoon los angeles extravaganza? hitting up amoeba for sure, grabbing a bite to eat, who knows what else. but does the fact that it’s with someone i’m only aware of at all because of this weblog make the whole thing nerdy and weird somehow? i don’t know; i’ll let you know.

but i don’t think so. (don’t worry, jen).

dammit.

dammit dammit dammit.

we didn’t win.

we gave a great presentation. in fact, we gave what we all agreed was probably the best presentation we’ve given in college so far. we spoke well, we had good ideas, we did a good job. afterward one of the andersen guys told us we did a great job. we felt great about it.

then we went to the reception downtown in a nice restaurant. free appetizers (very tasty) and drinks (my first social cocktail in a business suit — i felt so grown-up). they announced second place… not us. we thought we had it. they announced first place. also not us. dammit dammit dammit.

here’s the worst/best part though: right after they finished with the “you all did a good job, we saw a lot of excellent presentations today…” speech, one of the judges came over to us specifically to tell us we did a good job. there were three or four teams (out of 12) that they really had to split hairs over to pick a winner, and we were right in there. as a matter of fact, he thought our plan was the best. it’s just that we forgot to go into how our plan would affect the employees, and one of the guys was really looking for us to discuss that more. we had decided while we were putting it together not to stress that point because we thought it was such a simple plan that talking about that wouldn’t really add much to the presentation. dammit. then, of course, we talked to another guy later that said, yeah, you guys had highest scores across the board except for not mentioning how it would affect the people…dammit.

so is it better to know you at least almost won 1000 dollars and a free trip to illinois, or worse because you knew how close you were if only you had added that one extra point in your speech? i don’t know, i’m pretty frustrated and annoyed right now. i mean, the winners got their picture taken with one of those huge novelty cardboard checks. how many times in my life will i be that close to winning a big novelty check? probably very few, and we blew it by such a small detail.

dammit dammit dammit.

so…much…consulting…

but it’ll be worth it when we win tonight. or at least get a free dinner at a classy restaurant after the whole ordeal (with free drinks).

so in case i don’t get much of a chance to write anything until late tonight (post-victory-celebration), i thought i’d at least get on early and pop in a new song of the week. this one’s by cave in. my friend spencer, who usually keeps me well-informed as to good hardcore bands, told me to listen to these guys a while ago when he discovered their album jupiter. i listened to it and it was different and cool — and really good.

then the radio station picked up their new 2-song ep, which i played and also thought was great, so now i can’t stop listening to this song lift off. listening to it, i can’t really place it with any other specific genre of music i enjoy; it’s really just very well-played, well-arranged rock. and it gets me screaming. so there it is for you to enjoy too.

now i should prepare to act professional. this takes some doing, so i will see you tomorrow.

boy, missed another day there. i’m usually not this busy, is all, but this project is taking more time and energy than i thought, plus having to do some classwork for a change this week, and hopefully you can forgive my absence.

of course, i can’t write too much right now, because i have to go to KSCR in less than half an hour, and i haven’t gathered any cds yet. then immediately after it’s off for more consulting meetings. we are going to rock this competition.

i still want to touch on something else though. i’m getting very frustrated this week with the utter lack of certain physical attentions, however slight, and it’s steadily making me more and more restless. i’m assuming it’s in part because valentine’s day is looming ever nearer, as the last time i kissed a girl looms ever farther in the past, and general hopelessness in the dating department becomes more and more oppressive. it’s just not doing wonders for my mood this week. i really want this run of loneliness to end. and soon. perhaps the pre-valentines party we’re having this weekend (yes, you’re all invited) will help. i’m pretty bent on having some sort of valentine, even if it’s just the smallest gesture. but get my hopes up too much and next week will just be worse, so we better tread carefully here.

ah well, maybe it’s better that i’m so busy this week. less time to sit here and sigh wistfully while i listen to love songs.

off to radioland!