eateggs

Ah. Second semester. It finds me sitting at work, killing time on the internet, and wrestling with the realization that my study habit haven’t improved a bit. There are two facinating books full of assigned reading that are sitting all of six inches from my laptop, and yet I find myself staring absentmindedly at Firefox, hoping I’ll come up with some sort of inspirational way to kill more time on the internet. I’m an addict, really– like a television junkie, after a fashion. Like a television junkie in that I’m content to whittle away countless hundreds of hours into stupid online entertainment. I’m not edified by it. I’m not built up by it. I’m not challenged. I’m not enlightened. But the worst of it is that I’m really not even all that entertained– it’s all the same banal, formulaic Flash scripts and poorly crafted Photoshop humor. Some of it is humorous. The rest just kills the time. And I hate that. I hate that I’m so lazy that I would rather just kill off time than to learn to explore or to, horror, do my job. And yet I’m still here, posting away while my Art History book sits untouched.

Eek. I think I’m headed for the quarantine closet. It’s been decided that, since our Quad is so small, anyone who gets sick needs to move to the closet upstairs and enter and leave via the emergency fire exit, so as not to get everyone else in the quad sick. And I’m… not feeling so well. Ug.
(Edit: this feels strangley like fungus-water disease. I hope it’s not somehow related to drinking from the fungus-water bottle..)

Hmm. What else is new. I’m working on starting up a DC++ hub for people here on campus. We’ll see how that goes. (eateggs.com/music)

That’s about it, for now. God, I hope I don’t get sick. Maybe I’ll go do my job for a while, and eventually settle down to reading about the Chinese Pre-Imperial period.

In two hours, I’ll hop into my car with Sagar in order to get him to the Billings airport by 4:30AM to catch his 6:30AM flight. It’s been a wild two weeks– I moved in with Sagar almost exactly two weeks ago and now it’s time to pick up where I left off and drive into second semester.

I played my guitar for upwards of three hours tonight, in addition to the hour that I played it this morning. The last two weeks have been musically rich, and I hope the music continues after Sagar leaves. I’d like to start playing the piano again as well– I’m not there yet, but I’m afraid that I’m soon going to be at the point where I say “I wish I had never quit–” a prophesy my mom made when I quit piano at the start of 7th grade. Honestly, I’m lacking in musical tallent, or lacking for rythem at the very least– but I have hopes that I can compensate for my lack of tallent with an abundance of enthusiasm. In the meantime, I added Dispatch’s Flying Horses to my limited repetoir tonight, marking my first Dispatch song.

I find myself torn– there’s SO much that I want to write for my own sake– thoughts, trivial details, etc, but by the same token I can’t shake the idea that I have an audience (albeit limited) and, odds are, my audience has NO desire to read countless pages of benal ramblings. Ug. I’ll try to stick to stuff that’s interesting.

We played a 22 player game of Counter-Strike tonight: Bovard has done a fabulous job of passing Counter-Strike around, and we had most of Quad E playing against Quad A and Langford. It was good times. And yeah– I kicked some ass. Go me. =)

In other news, I have established myself as a master of parallel-parking. Finding a parking-place close to my Quad has become especially important as of late with the onset of sub-zero weather and my determination to park as close to the quad as possible has been matched only by my desire to spend as little time in the cold as possible. With this as my motivation (and Sagar as my witness), I sqeezed my car into this improbably small space:

Oh, and just to dispell the notion that this was luck, not sheer parallel-parking skill, I did it again. =)

… to be finished later

I just finished my first International Film & Television class, and all I can say is that I’m excited for the weeks to come. In addition to having interesting subject material, the class is being taught by an articulate and intelligent Brit who promises to add flair and intrigue even when the subject matter becomes ponderous. As an introduction to the class, we watched Wim Wenders’ Tokyo-Ga, which takes the form of an observational tribute to Yasujiro Ozu, a Japanese director whose works span from the early silent era until his death in the mid-sixties. The film carries the tag-line of “a film diary,” and, despite an onerous and ill-fitting score emblematic of everything despicable about 80’s music, fulfils its quest in preventing a uniquely observant perspective on 1989 Tokyo. A basic tenant of the film is that Ozu captured a true perspective of Tokyo and manages to create an intimacy between his viewer and his subject. In the true tradition of a tribute film, Wenders attempts and achieves much of the same effect by providing unique glimpses into both Tokyo and Ozu as a person. Although sometimes grating in its presentation, it was as unique as it was effective.

This is not an auspicious start to the semester. It’s Wednesday morning, and I have my first day of class in about 8 hours. In spite of this, I’m sitting in front of my computer, whittling away the hours until the sun will rise to meet me again. Why? Lord only knows. In the background I’m making a backup of my Windows Profile– I’m a wee bit concerned, seeing as how one of my hard drives decided to fail on me. At the very least the offending drive is being replaced, and I can only hope that my computer will run a little better with two functional drives again. Speaking of which, my 250Gb external MP3 hard drive should arrive tomorrow, which means it’s time to make some new friends (i.e. find some new music collections to borrow).

Looking back on break, I can say that, although I’m not sure that it was good, at the very least it was good times. I had no problems filling the days, which for Cheyenne is something of an achievement. Living with Sagar was (and continues to be until next Monday) enjoyable, and the trip to L.A. helped break up the monotony of three weeks in Cheyenne.

I miss Chester. Somehow we managed to bond more in three weeks over break than we did during the three months of summer. I suspect this is either because: 1) I’m, emotionally, in a much better place now than I was this summer or 2) Chester has a personality now. He almost makes we want to come home for the summer.

My classes tomorrow are as follows:
History 319: Ancient Rome
History 109: Asian History
MTA 218: International Film History

I should be excited.

Being back in the Quad is good. God, I missed a lot of the people here. William, Meekyung, Autumn, Bovard, Ken, Andrew… god, I might as well name everyone in the Quad (with the obvious exception of Little Ben who somehow managed to pass not only the last 18 years of his life but also all of Christmas break without learning any social skills whatsoever). The new roommate, Leif (pronounced lay-ffff, vindicating it from otherwise being what I would characterize as an “unfortunate name” for reasons known mostly only to me which I certainly won’t share with you =P ) is a solid guy, and I’m excited at the prospect of getting to hang out with him throughout the upcoming semester.

I saw Kinsey tonight (4/5 stars). A great movie, it inspires a terrible regret that those who should most see the film are those who never will. It presents a realistic and mature perspective on sex– what it is, what it isn’t, and possibly why– and manages, if only for 90 minutes, to rescue what could otherwise be a natural and wonderful act from the clutches of life-destroying Christian morality. If only the movie had a wider audience…

Well, as the clock ticks closer to morning, it seems that my summons to bed have arrived. I hope I wake up in the morning– what a precedent to set: not making it to my first class of the semester!

1. Wrestling with Chester. He’s developed such a personality and I so very much enjoyed the times I had over break to just play with and enjoy him. He’s scared of a corner of the kitchen, will try to sit on your lap even when there’s no lap to sit on, howls when the piano is played, and is astoundingly quick when I chase him in laps around the stairway. I’m going to miss him this spring.

2. The Wyoming sunset. I never had the opportunity to get out and watch a sunset alone, but one of the sunsets I saw from my house caused me to choke up as only Wyoming sunsets are able.

3. Walking along the nighttime Santa Monica beach as the waves gently came in, lapping over my feet, reminding me of their enormity and beauty…

4. Seeing Copenhagen. The performance was amazing.

5. Driving. Alone. At night. Recklessly. In the daytime. Alone, recklessly at night. Alone, recklessly in the daytime. Going up the 9th St. Canyon…