I Think. I Am. I Will.

EGO.

I happened upon Ayn Rand's "Anthem" during my ACT Strategy course. The complete elimination of the word "I" from the English Language made it a lot like tasting something you can't quite put your thumb on - I had to roll "Our head hurt" over my tongue a few times to decide if I liked it, and I did.

The rising pride and mounting outrage for "We" started sending what remain of Atlas Shrugged coursing through my veins, and then I kicked in the door of my home, having finished the book, and said it to myself a few times:

I Think. I Am. I Will.

I Will It.

Ego.

It sounds good - like Captain John Yossarian's name. I like saying it to myself.
It's a little Mantra or something, and I hope I don't tire of hearing it, when I start my day out whispering it over the pot of coffee and Walk The Dinosaur that usually start my day.

I hope it helps me balance work with the Steam I tend to be overwhelmed in...
I didn't even tell Eiki goodnight...

Watch regret wake me up at 4:30.

The Man Without Guilt.

In Atlas Shrugged, John Galt proclaims that he cannot be swayed by the means of Chick Morrison, Wesley Mouch, and James Taggart because he is the man without Guilt. He basically says that, as he understands the consequences, intentions, and implications of what he does, while adhering to the strictness of his own moral code, that he is guiltless by means of being true to himself and those whom he strikes with.

I am not John Galt, and ever since I read his line regarding lies, and how they are looting the beliefs and thoughts of another - "Profiting off one's Ignorance and Trust in You", though that is not verbatim by any means - I began to feel a welling guilt, and I felt that I must come clean.

I've had a computer for months.

I did truly sell everything - I was in a bit of a monetary panic because the Military wanted to strong-arm my father for his attempts to advert another tour in Iraq. My parents sat down with me, and discussed the reality of me having to make cuts and pay my own way through Medical School, and at the end of all that, I did what I had to, and continued my search for a Retail Job.

However, I found that I was allowing myself to be distracted. My Scholarships were being completed at a painstakingly slow pace, and the reality of me completing my Government Hours before my initial enrollment was slipping away, because I had found myself spending evenings sitting on Steam, chumming it up with people I enjoy the company of.

I couldn't think of a way of saying, "I must focus - You're all a distraction", to everyone that I had spent so much time with, so I lied. I made a petty excuse, saying the lone laptop I'd been given on Black Friday years ago had broken, and I was without any means of talking to anyone.

Worse yet, I began to get lonely. After a blizzard put the town in a state of "Regional Emergency", and I found myself stuck indoors, and without any work to be done for a week, I began to visit Steam, claiming to be at the library. I began to write the people than I missed in my self-imposed exile to studies.

There's no gray to these things - I'm a liar.
To be the Man Without Guilt, I have to say the truth, and put it in plainest of terms.
I have lied.

I won't ask for forgiveness - it was a long-running bit of deceit - but I will remove this crushing guilt, and say that I've lied to you.

And to you - the man who passed me Maus - I am sorry.
I betrayed whatever investments you have in me, if there are any at all.
I would sooner tell you this in person, if you were not so inexplicably difficult to contact.
In reality, I've come to suspect you'd known I were lying all along.

Jewish Mice and Bookstores.

I now suspect that my poor sleeping habits are not a product of my arousal. That insatiable feeling's let-up, so I had begun to suspect that, perhaps, my button-down shirt was too warm or something. I avoided it, but for some reason, I can't help beating my Alarm Clock by a half-hour. I really don't like it; just sitting there, waiting for my alarm to go off so I can go make coffee. 4:30's too early. 5:00's just right.
By the by, while still on the subject of sleep, I had a bizarre dream: This local boy had sat down and tortured his girlfriend to death - the police discovered this, because he recorded the sounds over a tape of "You Are So Beautiful to Me", which was particularly disturbing, because the Police listened to it in my dreams, at which point I woke up in a cold sweat before my alarm went off. I don't remember too much, but I remember the kid rose to some sort of bizarre popularity, kind of like Nevada-tan. Everyone was offering shirts and stuff that had the number 24 on it, which apparently had something to do with the killer. This lady in the streets kept trying to sell me on it, but I was kind of disturbed and I kept trying to outwalk her, until I finally turned around and said, "Did I fucking stutter or something? I'm not buying what you're selling!"

Weird business - I woke up a little scared to go get coffee.

In a completely different tangent, Borders Books is closing here. That kind of stuck me right in the heart - I've always been a fan of Borders, because Waldenbooks and Hastings always seemed too uppity and too sleazy respectively, but Borders was always around and always had the Goldilocks Factor - Juuuust Right.
A lovely, lovely friend of mine recommended to me a two-part comic memoir of the Holocaust called "Maus", and after so much Ayn Rand, I decided I could definitely go for it. I went into Borders and figured I could at least get it at a discount, since they're having this "Out of Business Sale".

It was really sad, actually. The walls are slathered in these quotes like, "When books are no longer around, hypothesis is suspended, creativity stunted, and intelligence abandoned" or such, and I'm just like, "Well, there goes the last bastion of intelligensia in this town beyond the abandoned Library."

I got Maus for about thirteen dollars.
It was a great read, because he keeps his characters very true to their real life selves,
down to the way his father, Vladek, talks and his troubles portraying people of different ethnicities - I particularly liked his "So, I'm marrying a frog!" bit, when he's discussing with his wife what animal the French should be.

I bought Cardstock there, as well. I figured, since I usually get my Postcards from Borders, I would need to make my own once the bucket was kicked, but now I'm faced with a weird issue - I have all the neat pictures and such on my USB Drive, but I've found that the paper is a bit thick for most printers...

...I figured that I would take the paper and USB drive to the Biomedical Wing and use their triple-feed, electron-scanning, jam-proof printing apparatus with built-in stapler to print it, but we got a particularly bad snow front, and now I don't know if I'll be able to get there today.

Also, I confess that I got a little lonely - I'd called a bunch of folks last night and wound-up with answering machines. I called Liam, but he was a little preoccupied so after I talked about my Seminar on Diabetes, I kind of wound up clapping the phone down, because large spans of static from the snow started replacing the conversation, which had lulled to a stop.

Ahh well, maybe I'll squeeze an inch in on everything with a few custom postcards?
I'm working particularly hard to get this one of a naked man striking yoga-poses around his camera to fit postcard-dimensions.

If anyone's interested in making your own, I'll tell you that the typical postcard dimensions are, in Inches, 3.5x5, and that a sheet of regular printing paper is 8.5x11.

I think you can print a bunch on one sheet of paper, if you line them up right - I plan to do this, and use my straight-edge paper slicer to cut them into nice rectangles.

In closing, Maus has enlightened me to the fact that Nazrin is Jewish.

I Didn't Sleep Well.

My little sister and I often have differing tastes. She's very much the social person and she enjoys taking the spotlight on things, whereas I typically wind up being the, "I'll handle it." quiet leader of Projects and Schedules. She can't cook beyond (and is content to live off) baked potatoes or EZ-Mac, where as I can fold Gyoza to try and impress people I hope to room with, someday. However, we found like ground about a year and a half ago when she sat me down on her bed to show me a bunch of odd, scribbly cartoons on her laptop: they were by a man named Levni Yilmaz, and called "Tales of Mere Existence". One I remember very distinctly was called "Horny", where he relays all the things he finds arousing, before abruptly cutting off with "I don't want to talk about this anymore, because I'm unbelievably fucking horny".

I wanted to do what Levni did, so I sat back with my Reporter's Pad and I started doodling, though I don't have access to a scanner here in Government. I feel a little like Liam without having the doodles for each one up, and just listing off things that get me off. No offense, Chief.

Here goes:

When I see someone with tan lines, and their skintone lightens a few shades under their shirt, I get kind of horny.

When I sit in bed wearing my over-sized button down shirt as pajamas, I wonder what someone would do if they were lying beside me, and that gets me kind of horny.

Sometimes, I think of Francisco d'Anconia and Hank Rearden, and the prospect of being a Conquest, and that gets me kind of horny.

I imagine cooking breakfast in my Pajamas and someone sneaking up and grabbing me while I cook, like in the lousy Doujins, and while that's a total fire hazard, I get pretty horny.

The little gap between the head and shaft of a penis gets me kind of horny.

The way the skin moves on an uncircumcised penis gets me kind of horny.

Tissues lying around after someone has finished servicing themselves gets me kind of horny.

The prospect of catching someone masturbating, and helping them finish gets me kind of horny.

The thought of someone resting their feet upon my shoulders gets me really horny.

Kissing someone's bare back or neck gets me sort of horny.

Catering sheepishly to someone's fetishes makes me awful horny.

I didn't sleep well last night - I was unbelievably horny.

The Sign of the Dollar.

This is a Corner just a stone's throw from my home. Also, in Trimble, I passed a plant that read, "REARDON METAL".
I've finished Atlas Shrugged.
I've shaped my political leanings and fondness for Chick Morrison's name by reading it.

Unions seem redundant in the modern society: they were a product of unjust treatment back in the days of Mining Tokens, when you were forced to climb around blind in caves sucking coal dust for pay until you got Black Lung. Nowadays, you get a respirator, proper payment, and compensation for any injury - You've protection from your employer's whims, and Unions now seem to be a noose around enterprise.

Affirmative Action seems archaic now, too. First off - I don't see the point in paying minorities for being minorities: "Judge me not by the color of my skin unless it is in a positive light"? That's almost backwards racism. Msicar, or something.
In addition, there is a theorized "Minority-Majority" - The Hispanic-Asian population boom that followed World War II is still in full swing and soon will put the plain old Wonderbreads like me in the category of "Minority". I don't think it's right that I be payed for being White, or a massive influx of people be payed for being some other color. You'll never quite be rid of the concept of a "Them" versus an "Us" regardless of what race you are, but I think we've come a long way from the Poll Tax and White Primary Election.

As for Welfare, I think you should have a job or something before you cash in on it. There is no shortage of Work in the United States, just a shortage of enjoyable work: I would like to work the Retail Job that has been archtypical of every first paycheck; if I desperately needed a job, however, I could unload crates, tar roads, or something. You must make roughly $20 an hour to equal the benefits of Welfare - at that point, what's the incentive to work? You're essentially crossing your fingers and hoping the person is a Dagny Taggart or John Galt who is, at best, taking from you on Credit, but those are larger-than-life people, and the average person is blatantly more likely to stay there feigning ineptitude to make $20 an hour.

Social Security, as well...
It was a good idea for its time, but since its introduction there have been medical advancements. Social Security was initially a crutch for those who were 65 or so during a time where people died at age 60 - if you were on it, you weren't on it for long. Now we have that privilege extended to any and all in an age where people live to be about 80. This means that, what was initially a small crutch for the elderly for a span of a few years is now an umbrella that pays out to whoever's under it and for fifteen years or so. With medicine socialized, as well, I think the medical treatments that it was supposed help with have been eased. One-sixth of our Gross Domestic Product is out the window under those seventeen years - the age should be adjusted to fit the standards it once represented, if nothing more: 65+ is the fastest-growing Age Group in the United States.

Foreign Aid seems iffy as well. You cannot throw dollars of a weakening currency at a Nation and expect it to get better. Wealth, indeed, is not distributed, it is created. As such, what you need to do to fix a nation is send someone who knows what they're doing over there, and back their efforts. If places like Nigeria had no opportunity, they would have been abandoned long ago, like a majority of the Sahara. Send doctors to train doctors - create a program for revising the infrastructure. Capitalize on what resources are present - in Nigeria's case, Mining - and provide sanitary water or something. You cannot simply transplant wealth like a heart and expect it to work.

These things are not free, no, but they are simple things that can be done with little money: Paving a road, punching a hole where you'd drill a well, running a classroom - that is manageable, and Greg Mortenson managed to do it as a third party.

Currency - I would like to go back to some sort of backed standard, as they had in Atlas Shrugged. I would like a world where the strength of a currency is not measured merely by how much intangible faith is held in a bill. You cannot weaken a currency if it has actual Value beyond it's implication.

...Ahh, and love. It has shaped love as well.

Thankfully, I do not adore you at a deficit.
I think you earn what praise I do give you.
We trade our anticipations.
I trust a glorious something to comes of us.

In the months that follow this,
I have a sneaking suspicion that I may glance back upon myself and how influenced I was by this book, and I'll laugh and call myself an idiotic idealist or something, or I'll find contradiction, and not check my premises.

Egh, I can't wait to unwind, and just read Maus for a bit...

Aaaah, Bittersweet.

Maryville kicked me in the teeth when I joined a few others in their academic competition - they drill these little flashcards, and our mathematic's guy walked so that he could go attend a meeting amongst Cotillion, which is a little organization that passes out mad funding if you agree to attend fifteen meetings and learn the ways of proper etiquette. I qualified for Cotillion, but didn't meet the deadline - now I'm kind of glad, because that guy's pretty much leased them his entire life for the span of the year. They crushed us, though - it was sort of like trying to play Alien Swarm without a Techie - You know what I mean; I know it's an unpopular game and all, now, but when everyone played it, the Tech guy would be the first to get frustrated and walk, and you'd just sit there. Dying a lot. Listening to annoying response-clips.
We made it through the first and second brackets, and then they snuffed us.
While spitting out my teeth and waiting for the City Transit, I doodled a little on the scratch-paper they dished me to solve the math-calc questions.

Remade pumpkin flan. This time, I overboiled the sugar a bit, and it came out a little bitter - bitter like coffee, not bitter like booze. It's actually kind of pleasant in a weird way; like pumpkin-pie in an orgy with a coffee-cake and flan.
I figured I'd show it off a little, because I know weeafood is through-the-roof.

























Yeah - Eat your heart out, Nue.
I can make Pumpkin Flan. Twice.
All you can do is parade around in stockings.

The post-office returned my Valentine's valentines...
I'm resending them all in one box, later, and I'm using a more reliable company's next-day shipping, because this was supposed to there by last week or so. All the Atlas Shrugged stuff isn't helping: "Blah-Blah, Henry Rearden. Blah, I payed you, and I expect competent service, because the money I have saved is a measure of my capacity to work and think. Blah."

...I didn't really say it; I'm not good at being an utter bastard to people who are just doing their job, but by God I thought it.

Oh - I tore the connective stuff on a rib at the Gym.
This military guy, he goes, "Hey, buddy, how much do you lift?"
"I usually toss two forty-fives on."
"Why are you doing forties?"
"I'm still sore from the last time I came here."
"C'mooon! You got this buddy!"

...Yeah, I didn't have it. There was a reason I did forties.
On the fourth rep, my elbows gave out, and I dropped it.
It hurts to take deep breaths, but the hospital can't do too much for it.
Every now and then, I pop and Ibuprofen for it, but I haven't been able to for the past few days because if you take Ibuprofen and donate plasma, it's useless.

I'll try to be around in a day or two. There's a break in schedule, and I've got nothing better to do beyond finishing Atlas Shrugged.

The Postal Snail.

Everything's coming a bit later than I planned - the Valentines I'd sent out to arrive early are off-kilter, and only one person's gotten any Cucumber Soda - the little Hearts are there fine and dandy, though, and some of them are international. I really hope nothing's exploded in its box and is on its way back to me as a, "Sorry, we blew up your package". I've gotten one, maybe two of those. They were both pretty small, too - Soap and Clothing.

Valentine's Day was pretty uneventful - I puffed myself up and got ready to deliver this pretty-unrehearsed speech full of Randian values and "I'm proud to know you"s, and it was promptly put to a halt with a witty reply of "That's pretty gay".
Hilarious - I laughed for three minutes solid.
You're a witty bastard, Valentine - I wouldn't have it any other way.

Gears of change are turning, and I hope nothing catches on them - Charles is supposed to be getting out of the house when his taxes come in - we're essentially booting him out the door with seven-hundred dollars or so; I don't know if he's staying here or heading back to Oklahoma, but he's not coming to New York with us. I'll be glad we're short a negative do-nothing who drinks my coffee - today, I double-brewed yesterday's coffee with a spoonful of Instant, with the hopes that it would be so bitter that he'd be grossed-out and would stop stealing my coffee in the morning. We'll see how that goes tomorrow.

In slightly less-positive changes, we've got to put the family dog down. She's not too old, but she's a pretty large breed, and she's begun to get tumors, anxiety issues, and if we ship her to New York, we're worried we'll aggravate the notorious hip dysplasia the breed's infamous for. My father said he won't go in to see her put down: that kind of bothers me, because me and my mother were the only people who legitimately cared for her. My father was not above slapping her around when her anxiety issues frustrated him, and my sister was quick to sign the death warrant after the dog spent an evening crying to get into her room...

I guess it bothers me to see people be so woe-struck when they didn't make a difference in that Dog's existence. I'm going to see her euthanasia - I feel like I owe it to her or something. Some sort of Old Yeller thing kind of boiled up out of all that fake-sad for me.

The Academics for today were canceled over the inter-com so I won't be here much longer; there's a mild flu-epidemic or something swimming around, so it's kind of a victim of it. I'll keep you posted when I can.

Happy Valentine's Day.

"S'pretty Gay."

Product Placement and Anticipation.

Reading the remaining 567 Pages of Atlas Shrugged in eleven days means a little over fifty a day. Admittedly, it has all begun to blur a bit, with the exception of everything Ragnar Danneskjold and the weird pseudo-sexual tension between Hank Rearden and Francisco d'Anconia.

Yes - Hank Rearden is Francisco's greatest conquest.
Hot, Blast-Furnace Lit Lovin'.

I know I'm trivializing it with all of my joking, but admittedly, the whole Francisco-Rearden bit is pretty welcome. I'm utterly lovestruck with Valentine's just around the corner. I'm starting to think like that - "I adore you out of my respect for who you are, what you do, and that which you hold as virtue."

With all that said, let's talk pirates - and not Danneskjold: awhile back at that Savannah Meet, I was given a package of crackers. I saved them, because I saw the lame opportunity to joke about Touhou product-placements. Captain's Wafers - the only snack-cracker proven to heighten your ability to bludgeon ducks.
Can Your snack-cracker steer a Palanquin Ship?
Yeah, I didn't think so.

I've finished sewing the heat-pack. I gave it a quick warm-over to make sure it didn't burst into flames, and topped it off with a heart. I feel good - I made it.
I make things.
I am a producer. Hoho.
I hope it goes over well - I know it'll get there late at this point, though.

I doodled on my first Bank Statement...
You'll see it tomorrow, if I can bum a computer somewhere.

I Wanna Be Your Canary.

You're the embodiment of all my ethics and virtues and ambitions.
I am ever-pleased to hear about classes and progress, and nostalgia, and goals.
Goals - you have goals. I love that.

I shouldn't be so on-edge speaking with you, but I tread on glass thinking that any lone slip could compromise something; I still regret telling the barking dogs to stow it, because it may have seemed insensitive.

I don't adore the Canary, I adore "The person who has a place they're willing to strive to be at".

I wish I could articulate myself, and speak with the same avidity I write, but I knot my tongue the moment I hop on the phone - there's a silly list of things that I've written to talk about:

Tempura
Citizen Kane
Pumpkin Flan
The Courthouse
Reservoir Dogs
Atlas Shrugged
Murasa Joke.

Most of them are scribbled-out, and the moment I hear, "I'm feeling rather nostalgic", I wind up tossing the list out the window and inadvertently lending myself to fond memories of climbing England Rooftops to stare at the sky with my childhood friend.

I relish Reunion backwards.
Sometimes, the fact that I'm kind of boarded-up here for a few months longer gets to me, and I wind up listening to Pyroxene of the Heart - it gets me through as many days as Walk the Dinosaur, which is second only to Coffee and You in that business.

You're getting a Heat Pad.

I Wanna Be Your Canary, Chief.
What do you say?

Dinner at Kumoi's!

Spent some time at the Courthouse. I listened to a thorough diagnostic about the courtroom procedure, and how "Authority" is sort of distributed through an Official, who has a specialized-person who works under him, and three guys who are instructed in turn by the specialized-guy, who reports progress, which acquisitions funding via an Auditor.

I also earned some quick laughs.
While giving a demonstration on how he can essentially hack your phone to tell what you text about while driving or adverting pedophile-charges, this Officer of Domestic Affairs' computer froze. I felt particularly clever for leaning back in my pew and muttering, "Y'know what computers do when cops are about? They FREEZE--!"

Later on, when the same guy was dictating how he used Tower Triangulation to pinpoint an accident's location, and then rooted through the files of a phone, he got into this detailed list-off about the sorts of things he can get off phones: "Your name, your balance, your location, your texts" and since he was talking about accidents, I muttered, "Your blood-type, 'cause it's all over the phone..."

That one didn't go over so well. It did later, in a phone call, but it didn't quite follow up "FREEZE--!". I think it might have just been in the timing.

When I came back from the Courthouse, I was greeted by a fridgeful of rapidly expiring carrots and onions. I julienned 'em, and steamed them in this mix of soy-sauce, rice vinegar, chili, sugar, and a little oyster.

I tried my luck folding lumpia, and this time, the Jiaozi turned out pretty presentable. I tossed them over some noodles with the carrots and a little chopped cabbage, then dumped all the rest of the stuff over some brown rice. Since I had ramen, I figured I could also polish off the lone egg leftover from Pumpkin Flan. I did.

The flan, by the by, was delicious. I added tablespoon of cream cheese with the can of pumpkin puree, and the whole thing came out perfect. It was smooth, sweet, pumpkin-y and the added cream-cheese gave it this firmness that I'd liken to cheese-cake. It was a masterpiece.

I meant to come here with a picture of the Flan, but I can't find it. I think it might be on a different SD Card. I won't give up - expect it.

Oh, and after that, I continued sewing my Valentine's Heatpad.
It's that purple thing tossed on my bedsheets. I'm doing it all by hand because my bobbin detonated when I tried a machine. The marks from my seamlines kind of faded through, and I accidentally sewed the second rice-and-tea filled pad to my pajamas last night, but y'know? I think all my trouble making it like this gives it a little character. Like that so-called "Love in Every Stitch" from grandma-sweaters.














It's full of rice, tea, and love.
Yeah. The secret ingredient is love.

By Jove, I sound like I should be writing for Kung-Fu Panda or something.
Anyways, I'm out like a light.

No Diggity.

Things have been pretty monotonous. I've spent the past three evenings sewing - I'm no master of thread and needle, and I've decided that the Johnny Wander Heatpad is probably a one-person treat. I don't think I have the patience to sew another, and I have to set to work building a sculpture of Atlas Shrugged in the next few weeks.

I've decided I'm going to make the Atlas out of wire and newspaper, and have an engine-block sticking out of his back. He'll hold up a red globe, symbolizing the pseudo-communist world that collapses without the "Atlas" beneath it. A railroad will go down the length of the globe, and Atlas' back, like a tail. It'll be pretty awesome, and cement me some college distinguishing.

In other news, a Spanish guy who doesn't speak English has taken to sharing the bench I use at the Gym with me. It's really quiet, and we communicate in pats, thumbs-ups, grins, and weights held up - a silent alternative to, "Is this what you have on the other side of the bar?"
It's kind of weird, but I like it.
He lifts a frighteningly high sum of weight, and rather than take the time to take off all ten weights or so that he puts on, I've decided to take off four, and upped my weight for the sake of convenience. My body hurts forever, and I could sleep, daily, at 6:00.

People are starting to wind up with gifts. I'm a little disappointed they're coming so early, but when you're a proverbial snail about the Internet, you have to take what you can get. I'm fighting the urge to call Sparrow and go, "Did you like the Cucumber?", and I think I'm losing - I'm definitely going to try after I finish this.

My local government course took me to vote on some civil issues; I said that I felt good about knowing what I was voting for, and the Professor goes, "No Diggity!".
No Diggity. I've been saying that all day.

This blog post is about over?
No diggity.

Coffee, Failure, and The Navy.

I just woke up from a bizarre dream where the Navy had convened at the local city-hall to give a demonstration -- a demonstration in song, no less -- about why they don't allow gays in the service. It promptly concluded with my mother explaining that Cows, while smelling worse than Pigs, are definitely cuter pets than them.

I got my pious ass beat at Savannah. We bested two teams, and thus qualified for the finals, but when they can name respected Psychologists based solely on the country they came from, I suppose I'm out of my league. The country wasn't even Switzerland, Austria, or Germany! I'm okay losing to that, I suppose. At least I made it to the final cuts.

My guts are messed up. The burning sensation that has plagued the area where my nose and throat meet has finally subsided, but the gut-stuff was really quick to step into its place - I really hope it goes away before the Gym opens, because my morning crunches (Geez, can you say "Patrick Bateman"?) aren't cutting it anymore, and I need a nice Chin-Up bar or some other piece of equipment to really start shaping them.

I saw a guy sitting at a folding table offering Communion in the streets on the Television yesterday. It was really bizarre, and I have to give it to the guy - it was pretty neat.

I've begun sewing heating-pads, a la Johnny Wander. I filled the first with Tea and Rice, so it smells good when you heat it, and I wound up, indeed, making it from my brown headscarf. I had an excuse to sew anyways - my coat pocket and backpack have begun to tear. Both tend to be overflowing with crap, and a guy I lift with likes to take the pens from my coat pocket and throw them in mock outrage when I tell him amusing insults. A few times, he's wound up yanking the pocket in turn, and it's started to fall apart. The most recent little comment I dished him has been:

"I'd tell you to fuck a wall with your head, but I know two walls can't fornicate."

I felt particularly clever with that, but it's actually not my line. A Ruskie buddy of mine told me it in Russian, and then promptly explained what it meant.

Anyways, my belly's pissed off, and I'm going to go provoke it with two cups of black coffee. I think the town might be snowed in again, but it never hurts to be prepared in the event that I wind up doing something other than sewing and listening to Eiki's music while I change my sheets.

Greetings from Savannah.

I'm at my fourth Academic Meet - this time, it's at Savannah, as opposed to Lee's Summit or Smithville, and supposedly there were be a lot of smaller schools, like us, who we will savagely beat like red-headed stepchildren. This was the case to all other small schools when we were in the larger competitions, but with a competition composed entirely of smaller classes, I think we can actually win this time - take home a little trophy.

I'm actually miserably ill, and Charles woke me up to the phrase,
"Don't bullshit me, okay? I'm thirty-two, I know better". He was arguing with a Girlfriend (He has a few.) over the phone around 1:30 AM or so.

I'm exhausted - I don't want to down a bunch of coffee because it's only 3:30 AM now, and I have to get to Savannah by 8:00, which gives me an entire five hours for my coffee to wear off.

Sitting at the post-office yesterday, I made a lazy remake of "Mister Blonde" from my little Cardboard Notebook. I just sort of redrew it on the back of a shipping form, so on the way back, I stopped at the Faxer's and had a scan made - a little crappy, but it cost me all of thirty cents and it didn't fold my notebook in half.

...There's totally a resemblance, what are you talking about?
I miss MSPaint, where my doodles look respectable.

Made tempura a few days back - don't use Celery, it doesn't lose any of that tart flavor or stringiness when you batter it.

Saw that we've somehow come into the possession of one lone bag of brown sugar; think I'm going to use some of it to whip-up a flan, and maybe get rid of some eggs in the process.
I love making weeafood because it goes over well.

"Oh, Ichirin. You cook so much better than Nue - longingly kiss at my neck".

It'll happen. You'll see.

Snow, Snow, Sun.

Watching the weather here has been a lot like watching a child who doesn't know who they want to get out in a game of Duck, Duck, Goose.

"Snow, Snow, Snow, Snow, Snow...Uhm, Snow, Snow, Snow, Snow, Snow, Sun!"

I've been snowed in for five days and only now has the snow let up enough to actually attend a class. My days consisted of writing mail, shoveling, working out, shoveling, and then cleaning. It was a really dull affair, and I popped into Steam twice or so to break the monotony. Everyone seems to be doing pretty well; everyone's getting my mail, with the exception of Strongest. I think that the German postal system's out to get me, because I've been writing everything extremely careful, but neither postcard has gotten there.

Valentine's Day's coming, so I've mailed out a big shipment of Cucumber Soda and Chocolates. Be sure that, if you get them both, you don't eat the Chocolates before you Kapapa it up. Cucumber is a very light and dainty little flavor, and I worry the chocolates might totally overpower it...

To a few of you, overseas, I'll give you your Customs Forms, because I'm worried the mail might not get there; I don't trust anyone from Saint Joseph to spell "Mönchengladbach" correctly:

Brando - Customs Form#: LC011615478US

Meiling - Customs Form#: LC011615481US

Parsee - Customs Form#: LC001615455US

Okuun - Customs Form#: LC011615495US

Cirno - Customs Form#: LC001615455US

Everyone else, I'm really sorry, but they didn't give me a Postal Code to track the package because it was Domestic.

I got my issue of Johnny Wander in the mail - It's all the comics I've painstakingly archived in dead-tree format, with all sorts of little goodies that I adore: A recipe for Dream Curry, How to sew a Heat-Pad for Sore Muscles, a Diagram of Spacklehaus, and all sorts of other delights. I think I'm going to bust out my needle and thread, and sacrifice my brown headscarf to make a lovely heating-pad - that seems like just the hand-made, personal gift to win someone over.

...Maybe not the brown one - I think that has some sort of weird polyurethane in it, and it'd be a shame to say, "You're a delightful person - put this on!" and have it stick to someone's neck because they heated it up.
Maybe I'll just-...
I'll find something.

Oh, about the Cardboard Notebook: I've been taking all the stuff that would normally go here, and writing it into a little brown cardboard notebook. There's a lot of Murasa and Ichirin doodles in there. I'll see if I can get them up somehow. Maybe I'll try to redraw them in Paint?
There's:

"SEX - HOT, CASUAL SEX".
"Me on the Phone with Aaron at 1:00 AM."
"Kite"
"Pious Work, Work, Work"
"FOR LATVIA!"
"My Floating Lighthouse, and the Costa del Sol Torch-Tower"
"Ichirin is: Mister Blonde"
"Unzan is: Mister Pink"
"Snowed In"
"Three Weeks Fapless"
"Brine Maiden"
"Shit..."
"College Government - Persian Rug Pattern"
"Anemone"
" 'FUKKEN MASTERPIECE' - Captain Murasa paints a Sword"
"I MADE YOUR FAVORITE - PAAAN-CAAAAKES!"
"Captain Murasa is: Tyler Durden"
" 'I wish I played Newearth' - Ichirin is: Gauntlet"

I'll handle it all later - I need to down another cup of Coffee and to get my Vitamin C fix - I'm getting kind of sick, I think, but after five days snowed in, I can't complain and it's nice to actually get out beyond going to the post-office or Library.

Excerpts from the Cardboard Notebook.

01/01/2011-----
I woke up thinking about the concept of "Negativity" - in my Psychology course, I'd learned that children will sometimes say "No", even to things they enjoy simply to feel as if they have a choice in the matter. I think that's why I'm cleaning everything today. My lazy ass has to feel as if I have some sort of mastery, and that's why I'm in this state of joyous negativism as I clean.
Words of encouragement from Ayn Rand today:
"Great men can't be ruled".
"The question isn't who's going to let me, but who's going to stop me."
"But I don't think of you."

A Letter to Matt Griffith: 01/05/2011 -----

Dear Matt,

Remember when you looked out at that classroom full of people I said were candidates for teen pregnancy and a career bagging my groceries? You almost cried as you said, "That was me a few years ago. How did I manage to grow past all that? It's a miracle I turned out the way I did". I'm a shameless romantic, and to be honest, I'd thought about asking you to kiss me right there, so that I would at least know what it's like. I worry for you - that's all I can say. I often wonder when you'll cross the line and say the wrong thing to some super-conservative fundamentalist and they'll raise a boot and kick you right off the path of your delightful career. I worry you'll get too comfortable, and maybe you already are. Be careful - if I am in fact the kissing material I'd like to think of myself as, Teacher, I'd have some sort of loving obligation to speak my concerns and not let my self wonder if you could be helped had I just said something.

01/09/2011 -----
I just bought this little girl in the hospital a box of chocolates. I lost ten bucks on it, but I've got the $430 I've still banked, so I don't feel too guilty about it. Aaron didn't like Nice Guy Eddie, and I guess that killed Reservoir Dogs for him; I was so disappointed. Damn it, Nice Guy, why'd you have to be so vain and cool?
Also, Mister Blonde.

01/13/2011 -----
The Snow has subsided a little, but today it was so cold that my mitts didn't save me from getting chilblains. I've got to call Aaron tonight - I didn't call last night. I've been thinking about Sparrow this morning, too. He's really grand, and it's been a month since we've spoken. Why doesn't he ever call? I'm getting kind of lonely.
What do you call Murasa dressed as a Miko?
A brine maiden.

01/14/2011 -----
I talked to Matt the Teacher again. He said something pretty profound: "I'm seeing a pattern with all the guys you like", he says. "Liam, Aaron, Sparrow - they've all got a thing in common, when you get frustrated. You."
He said that I'm the sort of person who wants to be needed. That I want to help people so much that they can't possibly get by without me. I want to be indebted to. He said I have to be careful about this, because I'll be "easily taken advantage of by people I want to bone".
Isn't everyone easily taken advantage of by people like that?
I guess I've always thought that compromise was one of the perks people get to hold over my nose when I'm attracted to them. Maybe we should all be more like Hank Rearden.

01/16/2011 -----
I went to a party today. I was really out of my element. Things like that have never been my forte, but I was the only guy who wasn't from a church who showed up to the shindig, and I think that meant a lot to the host. Listened to some DJ Anemone. I liked him a lot from when I used to play Armored Core. I had this nuke-laden bot with a sniper-rifle and the big nuke-apparatus had to be balanced out with heavy legs that made the whole thing look like an anemone, and that's what I named it for. I remember naming the pilot Scylla.

01/23/2011 -----
It's never dawned upon me how realistic Syracuse and Yonkers have become until today, when I began numbering out the scholarships I qualify for at Pace. I told Sparrow the evening prior to this, and everything had reached some degree of syzygy or parity or something. The stars have all aligned and all is well on Planet Zack. Attending Pace, which I believe is the only one in the Yonkers Area with Medical is expected to run me about $32,000; with the $27,000 discount I get on scholarships, though, I think I'll manage.

01/24/2011 -----
I can't wait to have a room-mate. Last night I made the grandest Ramen to ever grace a pot, but I didn't have anyone to share it with and it wound up just sitting there. Evaporating. All night. When I bunk-up, I can show off my affinity for breakfast, and my ramen won't go out like that. Maybe I'll hang around Sparrow, and we'll walk around telling medical stories to eachother, laughing about failed appendectomies and nobody will understand why it's so funny but us.

I confess that I often wonder what it'd have been like if I could have played Heroes of Newearth. I could join in as Gauntlet, or something.