EGM Holiday Issue 2007- Number 223

So maybe I got a more excited about receiving a copy of my ‘Electronic Gaming Monthly’ than watching a new episode of ‘Tell me You Love Me,’ snuggling with someone special, or even (in a manic OCD moment) cleaning my living room. Am I ashamed of this? No. Should I be? Most definitely- yes. I am a nerd, but apparently, so are a lot people. Some people are so nerdy that they make that their debut blog post. Hats off to you Nate Mallard, I look forward to more honestly nerdy posts.

*********

#4

I really didn’t like the movie Superbad. I thought it was super bad.

Republican Debates

I’m not a Republican and to be honest, I only watched the CNN/Youtube debate last night in order to have background noise while I cut extemp files.  However, I have to admit that I thought the debate last night was far more interesting than the Democratic ones have been up till now.  The candidates are very diverse and their opinions equally so, perhaps that is the major difference for me.  I have a firm grounding (I think) in who the Democratic candidates are and what they stand for, I’ve only recently gotten interested in the Republican field. 

Additionally, though I support Hillary, they got some wicked sweet burns on her last night.  

But personally, my favorite statement of all things had to be what was said after the question ‘Would Jesus support the death penalty?’  The response from Mike Huckabee- ‘Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office.  That’s what Jesus would do!’ 

 It just seemed like everyone was having so much fun (in that ‘I hate immigrants and taxes that help the poor’ sort of way).  I enjoyed the debate, but I sincerely hope we have a Democratic President in 2008.

*********

#2

I can’t help but think of you every time I drive past that apartment, and wish things had been different. 

Ode to PostSecret

So in an effort to maintain my previously sworn Internet integrity, I have decided that at the end of each entry I will include one secret about myself.  They might be embarrassing, known to some, boring, interesting, or just something I think is unique to me, but they will not be known to the masses.  Thus, even when I do not necessarily post something that requires an emotional commitment on my part, it will include one no matter what.  This forces me to stand by what I post since a part of me will literally be attached to each one.  Yes, I will admit that I like to think of it as my own little Postsecret.  I will not use or include names or pseudonymns, you might be able to tell it’s you, but I will never confirm or deny this.  It either is or it isn’t.  One final disclaimer- Telling you the secret doesn’t mean I have to tell all the related secrets, the entire story, or explain myself to anyone.  It just is.

 *********

On a night after visiting home I returned to our place of residence and had to stop outside and cry in the cold.  Our cramped residence hall made me feel more at home than my Dad’s mansion ever could.

A few reflections, on a bus back from Norfolk (Finally posted today, written 11/10/2007)

First, it is always good to be 100 dollars richer than you were at 4 am.  Now that I am back on the bus and riding home after five rounds of Varsity and Novice LD, I am looking forward to petting my dog and the potential of brushing my teeth.  Through the dark we ride, I’m not sure how I got there, or how we are getting home, something that could categorize how I feel about my life right now, but I know I’ll get there.  Interesting that we are sliding past West Point for the second time, dim lights pointing it out from the darkness, but helping me see that I would not want to stop there tonight, or tomorrow, or anytime in the foreseeable future. 

 

West Point, I hadn’t thought about him in a while, then three days ago I wondered if I was getting sentimental feelings for a relationship that exists better in memory than it ever did in life.  You see, I immortalized him and his actions in my mind, made him a Hercules then, and still had in some regards now.  Even if we both completely changed- could it work?  Idle thoughts as I drive past the coffee shop I meant to stop at.

 

I hear a lot about team history and what comprised it before I joined it.  Veterans encourage new individuals to be like the team was several years ago, but the leaders are graduated and the ones that remember do not teach.  Despite this pressure to belong to the team I never knew, and despite my willingness to align myself with beliefs I never even knew, I fear I will never truly understand.  Additionally, and by saying this I may as well hang a sign around my neck that reads, “yes, I am a tool!” but I cannot be part of that team.  I am part of the new team, for better or worse, that urbandictionary.com’s it at Longview in between rounds of changing someone’s Facebook profile.

 

On this bus-ride I should be thinking about someone or something, a pilgrimage in which I have learned it all, and learned it all too late.  It is the recipe to an incredible soup that I lost moments after garnered.

 ”Just Some Emotional Things”

:sigh:

Deep inhale and exhale,

call your father on the phone. 

Tell him your problems cry out your soul, he’ll help you realize, you’re not yet too old.

Breath in deep those salty tear filled sobs

Drink in your sadness

Get your thirst filled by a homemade red sea

Look to your friends and realize sometimes you have to say it all

Before you can say nothing

Dream of me while you sleep

Pray I’ll be there still

Check my empty room

Run to the street

Wonder if I’ll come home

If that’ll be the promise I keep

For just like that whily old Nanny McPhee

For as long as you need me, there I’ll be

But as soon as you want me, I must leave.

 

 

Some Early Morning Thoughts

I am on my way home to the great Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Born and raised there, I sit here typing away in the Omaha airport w/ the Sandia Mountains (the range that borders Albuquerque to the East) as the background picture on my laptop and look forward to seeing those same mountains in just a few short hours.

I have a few early morning reflections that are numbered, but order is irrelevant.

 

1. Why is it that it takes me twenty minutes to go from my driveway to the security gate (parking car, checking into the airline and all) but thirty minutes to go through the actual security gate line?  At 5:50 am I thought I was way too early for my flight but as it turns out, I ended up arriving just barely on time.

 

2. Thanksgiving is such a weird phenomenon.  A holiday celebrating getting away from oppression and striking new lives up in a foreign land by brave individuals who dared to stray from home is celebrated through individuals flying frantically across the country to spend time with family and in-laws that they often can barely stand.  How did the tradition become this?

 

3. There should NOT be in existence a country version of AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” let alone by Big n’ Rich.  I would like to stab my ear drums so that they might forever remember that pain rather than the pain that I experienced at 5:30 this morning pulling out of my neighborhood at hearing that rendition.

X-Files Movie

Bored in the middle of the night I have begun researching the validity of the claims that a second X-Files Movie is under production.  It looks like it is all green light including a script written by Chris Carter.  I have one thought on it- FINALLY!!!!   I think my feelings have been and continued to be summed up by a fellow X-Phile who said “I want to believe.”  Nice reference and also, very accurate.  You can read about it-  Here  or  Here  I can’t wait for July 25th, 2008- Can you????  It only occurs to me now that this upcoming year is leap year.  I have to wait AN EXTRA DAY to see the movie I have waited a decade for.  How cruel is that? 

The New Blog

So many of you may not know, but this is the new blog.   The newest of the 5 I have written in at some point over the last three years.  I don’t like the look of this one, I’m still working on it, but it is up and running. I should put “Under Construction” as the title of the blog.  Any thoughts?

Anyway, I put the blog on my facebook profile, included a link to it on my most recent blog, and sent it to my brothers via email as of tonight.  I guess this is it now all I have to do is improve the look and begin my ultra bold and often terrifying introspection.  I’m sure it will be an adventure for all.  

PS- Can someone PLEASE explain to me why blogs dislike the spelling of “blog?”  Come on spell-check, get with the program. 

Car Wreck, Pibb Zero, and a homeless man

So FWD and I traveled to several stores (four together, and I went to Walmart w/out him) tonight in order to try and track down Pibb Zero to bring home to my Dad.  Dad loves the soda and they don’t sell it in New Mexico, go figure.  While out, FWD and I were talking about life and about dating previously he mentioned a pizza place that him and I went to.I don’t remember eating at this place.  He does.  I feel that he ate there w/ someone else and is super-imposing that memory onto me.  He disagrees.  However, there were also allusions in the conversation to my bad memory and my craziness so I am in a situation of either 1. He is absolutely correct and I can’t trust my own memory or 2. I am correct and the situation doesn’t really matter at all.

Anyway, we got into a fight about it, but since it doesn’t really affect him that much, he doesn’t really care that much, which is fair.  I mean, if it wasn’t a big deal to me, I probably would be less inclined to talk about a meal I thought I had with someone as well.  I, however, got so stressed about it that I had to drop him off and continue on.  I drove to Walmart only to find they didn’t have Pibb Zero either.

So pulling out of the parking lot after buying some s’more materials (FWD and I had talked about them), I hit another car who is pulling in.  This wreck = my fault.  However, they talk in hurried Spanish to me.  I understand it or most of it and especially the part where they call me a stupid bitch.  I let the words float around me, offering to trade information and do whatever I can.  I realize I am at fault, but for some reason they just want to get out of the situation as fast as possible.  I ask “you sure?” and they said “Yeah,” and walked away into the Walmart.  It is possible that they didn’t have insurance or were illegal in some other regard.

Climbing into my car I thought- I need a drink.

I head to Talli’s and pick up the debate-partner on the way.  Debate-partner and I have a couple of beers during poker and then drive home.  We see a homeless man on the side of the road and I want to help him out, but debate-partner doesn’t.  That’s fine since homeless guy is on my side of the car but the light turns green.  So then I circle the block and drive back, but now (due to crazy Omaha streets) homeless guy is on the passenger side of the car.  I want debate-partner to hand the guy some cash (my cash not his), but DP refuses saying something about “catching a communicable disease.”

PS- Third roommate, (RYNO), hasn’t been home in sometime.  I wonder what he’s up to.

“I need two people from ASO”

I was on the setup and cleanup crew for the Jimmy Eat World concert @ Creighton last night and I have something to say about the leadership.  I think that if you want a group of people to help, you should ask for the people, rather than incorrectly asking for a portion of the people.  This was exemplified last night when the CSU board kept asking for people who were in ASO to help.  While ASO had agreed to crew for the concert, they also picked up SEVERAL extra volunteers (myself included) to help them out.  So, every time ASO was asked to help… :shrug: I guess I could have opted out.  Technically they weren’t asking for crew-members, just ASO.  Why not just ask for the crew?  We are all wearing t-shirts for Fallapalooza that say “CREW” on them.  Anyway, I think that people should more carefully categorize each other. 

While I have multiple stories related to the concert, I have only one that I wanted to share now.

Ted, one of my friends, is a taller heavier guy with hair that runs all the way to his shoulders.  For some reason he reminds me a lot of my youngest brother Dominic, if Dominic were six years older.  He gets into an elevator w/ Melody.  Melody, previously a member of the Speech and Debate team, is not (to put it lightly) very intelligent and tends to get annoying as she will tell stories that last for ten minutes about nothing.  The elevator leaves and I am waiting for the next elevator ride to take my chair up to the next floor, but the elevator returns to the wrong floor (the one I am standing on) still fully loaded because Melody pushed the wrong button.  The people inside ask for directions (Melody asks, the rest look uncomfortable and awkward about asking) and the elevator looks to close again. 

Right before the door closes, Ted gets a look of realization on his face – “I’ll just get out here.  Thanks!”  He proceeds to climb over the furniture they have loaded into the elevator as Melody and others protest.  Ted sees me with the chair and hoists the chair that I am standing w/ into the elevator saying- “Here, now you have room for Nat’s.” 

Elevator closes and Ted says- “I just had to get out of that elevator!”  We walked back to the other work area laughing.

I guess I just found it interesting, because I still have managed to not interact w/ Melody very much, but even my new friends seem to end up trying to avoid her.

Highlights of the MANY comments- ”She just told me my hips are small, and that was awkward.”-Kim

:sees Melody massaging someone off to the side: “I don’t even know what’s going on!”-Julie 

”Maybe we could snowmobile over lakes, over dips and curves, through forests….”-Rob :goes off for another minute making fun of her ten minute snow mobile explanation:

”Who is she???”-Someone next to me 

And Mom turned to Dom and I and said- “This is my theme song.”

I’ve been thinking all day and I more confused now than when the day began.  I woke up and found myself staring at the ceiling wondering where my life had gone.  Where I was going.  What I was going to do.  I thought I should get out of bed, I should be doing something, making friends, anything.  With all the thoughts in my mind, my whole past moving like shadows in my mind.

 

I logged onto Facebook and on my wall Hotchy stated how important my blog was in helping him to understand my current situation.  It seems this conflict in my mind has lasted all night. I wake up exhausted wishing I knew what to do.  I’m tired and I’ve been hearing my friends’ voices telling me that I should get some sleep.  But I’m sleeping, just not resting.  Stress has got me out of my mind and I’m faced with a choice I can’t make so my subconscious is plaguing me in nightmares I can’t stop.  I think maybe if I just hold on I will make it through the week.

 

Uggh.  With all this I’m feeling like I’m headed for a breakdown, but I don’t know why.  My life isn’t that stressful.  It’s like I’m a song that everyone hears- but do you hear the lines in between the lyrics?  Can you read between the lines?

 

Reading this over I feel I have to explain that I’m not crazy.  You may not care I’m just a little stressed and exhausted.  I want to curl up next to you, I want to run away.  I am the dichotomy and it is making the situation unsolvable.  Well, I guess that’s how it goes.

 

I know, right now you can’t understand what I mean.  I’m writing in code and leaving things out of a blog no one reads.  I would tell you it all, but I don’t know how long I will be in the situation.  Why ask when I think the answer may be here any moment now?  Just stay with me.  Calm my spirit for just a little while and maybe then I can tell you. 

 

I know you’ll understand.  See, it’s not something I can explain with words.  Maybe music could perhaps describe a different side of me.

 

I’m not crazy, I’m just a little impaired.  I know, right now you don’t care, but soon enough you’re going to think of me, and how I used to be….