Baby steps…

I’ve recently come to the conclusion that I need a hobby – I am spending far too much time lately doing nothing. So, in a moment worthy of the rejuvenation machine, and with the encouragement of several friends wondering about my disappearance from the cyber sphere, I am hopping back into blogging.  This serves as a small shot across the rather sizable bow of the blogging community – I’m back. For the first time since since March 2008. GD, that’s a long time. See you again in a bit, Interwebbers.

Lots o’ Links

It’s been a busy couple of days, so I don’t have time to write, but I do have some memorable links to pass along to you all:

The South is still a bastion of idiocy.  I don’t suppose his appearance has anything to do with everyone dragging their feet?

It gets tougher and tougher to blame George W. Bush for his policies when apparently he is entirely unfamiliar with them.

Ever wonder why pretty much all mainstream media sucks?  It’s because 5 companies control pretty much all the media, and as such, there is no diversity of viewpoints – they all sell the same crappy, filtered view to the American public.

Speaking of the mainstream media sucking…this is a humorous take. Don’t laugh too hard, because there’s a large element of truth in the joke.

Thanks to With Leather, we now know Fox has apparently begun butchering sports reporting as badly as they have misreported every other type of news for years now.

Safari, the very well-regarded Internet browser available on Apple computers, just became available for Windows users, as well.  It’s not necessarily better than Firefox, but it seems worth taking a few minutes to download and explore – give it a shot.

Politics, humor, sports, and technology, all in one place.  This blog as a versatile as a Swiss Army Knife; and less expensive, to boot.  That’s all for now, enjoy the night – I’m off to do some laundry.

Damn you, USPS

So, this will be a quick blog entry. I am eagerly waiting for one of his colleagues to deliver a package:

Thus far, they have failed miserably. Priority mail apparently now means “yes, it will take us longer than two days to deliver a package roughly 80 miles.” Go suck it, postal workers.

P.S. All is forgiven if I get my package within the next twelve hours or so. Deal?

Pressure on people / People on streets

So this blog post will probably be a bit scattered, and mildly off the wall. I am blogging during 24, so you know what that means…I’ll only be writing during the commercial breaks. If I were to write during the action, I get the feeling Jack would look at me like this:

and start yelling at me to give my full attention to the program. Otherwise, he might add me to his shit list. Life is good too good for me to tempt an angry Jack. Why is life so good, you ask?

Actually, I do not know why I’m so pleased with life. It is just one of those inexplicable good moods that it would be silly to try to explain or to fight. Since I can’t tell you about what’s got me feeling so good, I can at least tell you about my life, right?

Work was entertaining today, since many good people stopped by the office for a few minutes or a few hours. Good talk always makes the day go by a little bit quicker. My Current Issues class went just fine, although it is exceptionally weird to realize I will never have it again. Class for next week was canceled because we ran way ahead of schedule today, so all I have left of my academic career is one class on Wednesday. Of course, there is much work to be done in the next few weeks, what I could refer to as the 4 P’s:

1. Paper

2. Presentation

3. Portfolio

4. Poster Defense

If I utilize the other 4 P’s: “Planning Prevents Poor Performance,” it is entirely possible I might be able to finish them all on time. However, I think we all know that half of that statement is incredibly unlikely. You know what that means. The king of P-words:

 

P-R-O-C-R-A-S-T-I-N-A-T-I-O-N! Now, this isn’t an entirely bad thing. When it comes to writing papers, I thrive on a unique combination of rapidly approaching deadlines, Red Bull, ticking clocks, cat naps, and the occasional Easy-Mac. Yes, it’s true, I am one of the many who do their best work “Under Pressure.”

However, in the finest tradition of procrastination, I have decided to take tonight off, so I don’t really need to worry about the original 4 P’s, at least not for tonight. Instead, tonight is all about 24 and maybe CSI: Miami if I am feeling frisky. Otherwise, I have a good book calling my name, and that’s more than enough to look forward to. And tomorrow, there is a distinct chance ma mère may visit Amherst for l’après-midi. For those poor souls among you who took Spanish in high school instead of the language of love: my Mom is thinking of visiting tomorrow for the first stage of Operation Move Out Matt and Chris. Of course, any operation requires rations, and hopefully dinner will be on Mama Bear so I can save my funds for the weekend. So, maybe it’s that simple…I am in a good mood simply because I will most likely see my Mom and eat good food quite soon – what more could one ask for from life? On that note, I am outta here kids, off to enjoy my nnight. I hope you all do the same…

 

 

 

 

 

 

If I had a Scheme for Everything…

So this is a quick one, but a meaningful one. Ok, not meaningful in the big picture sense, but meaningful in the postage stamp sized picture sort of way. One of my favorite bands is coming to UMass!

Less than Jake is coming to school as part of Southwest Week and they will be putting on a show on Southwest Beach next Thursday. Songs I’m hoping they might be playing:

• All My Best Friends are Metalheads
• Five State Drive
• History of a Boring Town
• The Science of Selling Yourself Short
• We’re All Dudes
• Motown Never Sounded so Good
• 1989
• Faction
• Sugar in Your Gas Tank

Should be a great show, I’m pretty excited to get a good spot on the lawn and just hang out – let’s hope the weather holds up…

Words of Wisdom

So, I was taking a standardized test the other day. You know the deal – read a passage, respond to it by choosing the best of four potential answers, so and so forth…Not much memorable to report about it, except for one amazing speech that I read. The sort of speech that changes minds and changes life. You think I’m being a little overly dramatic? Well, just read William Faulker’s speech given when he accepted the 1949 Nobel Prize in literature.

“I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work–a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed–love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and victories without hope and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”

Yeah, thats beautifully intense. Really made me want to become a writer again – wish me luck.

Boring to Batman to Bronchial Distress to Birthdays

So, one of the things I forgot about during my vacation from blogging: I am not a rockstar, and I am not a porn star, and I am not a sports or movie star. This has its advantages, such as:

1. I can eat at Antonio’s without autograph seekers mobbing me.

Thats about it. It also has some negatives, such as:

1. I am poor

2. A typical day consists of work, class, and cooking myself dinner-not playing in the Super Bowl or doing motorcycle stunts.

3. Ergo, my life is not always that exciting. As such, not every blog post is going to be wham! pow! biff! exciting.

Unfortunately for you and me, this blog entry is one of those posts. Many things are in the works, but none of them are concrete enough to write about as of yet – the only real news is that I have a sore throat, and that’s hardly news. More to come on the weekend later, but for now, I’m getting some TLC from myself – that means tea and a shower and bed, you pervert – get your mind out of the gutter. So, thats it for now, except…Happy Birthday Dad! I love you, and thank you.

$100,000,000 on a program that does not work a…

$100,000,000 on a program that does not work and does nothing but perpetuate stereotypes and racial profiling? Nah…that doesn’t happen in the United States, does it? Does it?

So many points to be made here, but I will let…

So many points to be made here, but I will let you all take this story in any direction you wish. Two thoughts to get it started:
1. Once again, the cops are getting more power, and the citizens are losing theirs.
2. Cops, even the most heavily-trained ones, aren’t very good with not shooting people, apparently.

I’m not sure this even qualifies as political,…

I’m not sure this even qualifies as political, but I am sure some connections can be made. Quite honestly, it was too humorous not to post. Any absurd thoughts, readers?