Category: Uncategorized

i just discovered something bizarre. i don’t know if any of you use mapquest to get driving directions, but i have before. anyway, tonight i was on there looking for a map of northern illinois to see where the hometowns of my friends were in relation to each other in an attempt to start planning my big winter trip. i punch in “chicago, illinois” hoping to get a nice medium-sized, general map. i didn’t get what i wanted, so i started fiddling with it. i thought maybe i could rezoom or something to get the right amount of information. then i noticed there was a tab on the top of the little map that said “street map”, and next to it one that said, “aerial photo”. hmm, let’s click on aerial photo.

and it’s an actual photograph from a satellite! the particular region i was looking at appeared to be some sort of shipping yards or something. but this was a bizarre discovery. so i punched in my address here and zoomed all the way in. up popped a reasonably sized view of the surrounding neighborhood–in enough detail that i could easily pick out our apartment building. i told my roommate, who tried his home address, and was also very wowed. then he said, “whoa, my neighbors had their pool filled in!” really, i think this is almost creepy. try it yourself. some satellite has been taking pictures of your home, and you didn’t even know it. just imagine, if they allow this sort of thing to be open to the public, the detailed and zoomed in pictures the goverment could take of you if they wanted to . . . (shudder).

katrina at debris has me near the top of a list that is not alphabetical, obviously, and so i will assume that it means she likes me second best. that’s more than i get from most people, so i must give her credit for this. and for having an interesting weblog.

katrina is from the houston area. my parents live there now, in a town called spring. katrina and i might have gone to the same movie once and never known it. isn’t the world strange when you think about it?

i’ve laughed pretty hard at a few things lately, but not as much as i did at matt’s drawing at the hero. holy shit that’s some good stuff. but not for the easily offended, maybe, so don’t blame me if your mom looks at it and sends you to your room.

a nice quote of the day from tonight’s living room chill session:

dom, josh, myself and shannon are sitting and talking. dominic recalls: “oh, i saw the girl with the nicest ass ever on the way home from class tonight…” (he goes into some details, we laugh).

shannon: “boys are so gross. i consider you guys the cream of the crop, the nicest boys i know, and here you are talking about some girl’s ass.”

dom: “what do you want me to do, come back and say, ‘oh, today i was so nice‘?”

and that last part was in the appropriate prissy voice. it was hilarious.

i hope he doesn’t mind that i’m always taking his material and sharing it in this public forum. if he ever decides to do standup, you will have already heard half of his act through me because i think he’s so funny.

one of my group projects for the end here is to put together a mini magazine and write articles for it based on one of the essays we read in class. it’s sort of a convoluted project, involving analyzing the essay, picking apart the “signifier” and “signified” of the magazine, and then trying to combine them… ugh.

tonight i was trying to make my article. i say make, because i wrote it, but now i have to get pictures, and do the layout. this is a lot more work than you might think, but it’s pretty fun. it makes me think going to design school would have been a lot more fun than business school, as do so many things, like even making simple webpages. alas, all my vast pools of creativity going to waste.

i’ve worked on this long enough though for one night. it’s high time i played some video games, or my mind is going to get all mushy.

i was going to write something earlier, but the computer lab i stopped by between classes was chock full of business jerks. figures.

today wasn’t half bad. i still find it amusing that living in LA has conditioned me to be really happy when we get a gray, rainy day. this morning was chill and drizzling, and i liked it. after working a few hours i went and got hot cocoa and a donut and walked to my next class, in the rain, and it was great. the weather, on days like this, just makes me feel so peaceful and introspective and aware, even. it feels more like life is going on when there’s bad weather and you just walk through it smiling anyway. it’s more real this way instead of just trying to be beautiful on another sunny los angeles afternoon.

i also saw a volkswagen beetle (not one of the new ones) driving down one of the wide university sidewalks through the middle of campus today. the two guys inside could have been maintenance people, or maybe they were just passing through and took a wrong turn onto a sidewalk at some point. it made me chuckle though.

tonight would be a perfect night to sit around on the couch with a girl and watch a movie and talk until we were sleepy. it’s a shame that i seem to be incapable of finding one to even propose this to though. no numbers to call, no doors to knock on. just me and the computer here. certain someones are not having this problem, to make matters worse — although i don’t hold it against her. it’s just like a mirror being held up to my own current love life, is all. the reflection is awfully empty.

good bye good mood.

oh look at that, it’s also wednesday night and time for another song. sorry i missed last week with it being holiday time. what can you do. all i can do is offer a really good tune this week to make up for it. this has been commanding my stereo time a lot lately, and it’s a well-written and rocking song. it’s called nebraska by the lawrence arms. it’s the new song of the week, so enjoy.

i’ve been feeling like time is so precious lately. i’m not even that busy, really, but it seems like i’m getting almost no solid blocks of time in which to just sort of sit back and do whatever i like. maybe i’m just not appreciating them when i get them most of the time. i do know that when i do recognize myself in a moment of relaxation or peace or leisure, it feels so very novel and rare, that i really have been relishing it, and wondering why i don’t get more time like that. i must be doing something wrong here.

i hope to have some of that soon. but here’s a story. i was doing laundry this evening, and i saw a quarter on top of one of the machines. i thought to myself, “bonus, free quarter. lucky me.” then i picked it up, and found that it wasn’t a quarter. it was a canadian quarter. sitting right there on top of a laundry machine in los angeles. how did it get there? why was it just left there by whomever brought it in? would it work in the american laundry machine? these are all questions i asked myself. but i also picked it up and took it back to my room with me. it’s probably a mystical, cosmic sign of some sort. and these things must be heeded.

time for more christmas shopping.

i have class in a couple minutes, so this must be brief.

wait, i forgot what i was going to say anyway. i probably didn’t even have anything to say.

but today feels like it’ll be good. so good morning, world.

sometimes you just can’t explain it, i guess.

i feel like i’ve been sparse the past couple days. maybe not. but let’s continue.

if i didn’t say it before, i’m gonna say it again now. it’s fucking great to have josh back. what a good guy. it’s hard to actively miss someone for a really long time, but it’s really easy, once someone’s back, for all the reasons you missed them so much when they first left to come rushing back, in the form of a list of reasons why they’re so obviously great. i just like having him around much better than i like not having him around, and that’s more apparent to me now that he’s back. rock and roll.

we only have 8 class days left, then exams. now there’s some good news. get on, move on with your life, it’s pointless to play if you don’t get paid, i say. and so did they. plus my loans are going through (luckily) for next semester so i can afford all my classes, and i got some change back from this semester the other day… the end of the semester bonus points are racking up. all this almost cancels out the dumb projects that are due.

i’ll spare you the same old “i’m a swamped college guy at finals time” complaints, actually. i’m tired of thinking those thoughts, so i can’t imagine you’d care to hear them from me.

illinois dwellers: careful, i will be within your boundaries one month from yesterday to reclaim the glory of my homeland. and maybe wreak some havoc. perhaps i’ll bump into you — if you’re lucky.

don’t worry; as i told someone recently, mock egotism is the only kind i’m really capable of.