Pulled from CNN.com earlier today:
Saturday, December 11, 2004 Posted: 10:18 AM EST (1518 GMT)
McDONOUGH, Georgia (AP) — A 14-year-old boy accused of bringing a pipe bomb to school wanted to sell it to pay for Christmas presents, but several classmates thought his $35 asking price was too high, the principal said.
I dreamed last night, which is in an of itself noteworthy– it’s exceptionally rare for me to dream. Well, more accurately, it was this morning that I dreamed, sometime between 9:00 when I woke up in Ken’s room and wandered back to my bed and 12:00 when I got up. But anyhow… In the first dream I had constructed some sort of cannon that could shoot bullets or small bombs. It rolled around on two wheels, kinda like a golf bag. I know that I had some sort of companion throughout the dream, but his identity was merely the murky quintessence of a friend– not a specific person. In the dream we went from place to place and shot things we didn’t like. I blew up a couple expensive cars and shot down an airplane among other things. Somehow we ended up shooting things in Ann Bertagnolli’s house (she’s my T&C Fellow, whom I’m fond of), except it wasn’t her waking house. Eventually we were caught, or rather my friend was caught and I found myself running…
The second dream was every bit as nonsensical. I was in a grocery store with three identityless friends. I don’t know why we were there, but I remember that I cut open a watermellon, but when I finished cutting it was a cut two liter bottle of watermellon soft-drink. I went back and got another watermellon and then there was some sort of VERY strange three person (two males one female) Blue-man-group-esque entertainment on the stage and then I went to go pay for my watermellon, and the cashier asked for my I.D. and I didn’t have it and then I woke up.
Yeah.
Anyhow. Last night, rather than Ocean’s Twelve, I ended up going to see The Motorcycle Diaries. I’m really speechless to describe or react to the movie. All I can say is that it’s a wonderful and amazing story– possibly one of the best movies I’ve seen. Period.
I think I may go ride my bike– it’s going to be getting into the mid-50s today.
Well, I’m off. Ta ta!
I just finished my last paper for Texts & Critics. Heh. I was so incensed by the prompt that I ended up writing a six page rant on the class as a whole. It was beautiful:
http://www.eateggs.com/school/2004.12.10%20T&C%20Rant%20paper%205.doc
For those of you who have the class, you might enjoy the read. If you don’t, don’t bother.
—
In other news, it’s Friday afternoon. I thought it’d never come. I’m going to go to a end-of-year party for my job for a little while tonight, then probably go and see Ocean’s Twelve and Sky Captain.
“Just admit it. If there were little babies around, and you had a fire-axe, wouldn’t you want to go up and hit them?” – Little Ben
It was good times with the Quad tonight. We went to free pancakes and pictures with Santa, and then we came back and played No Holds Barred in the courtyard.
First row: Goggles. Bronzed processor. Back row: three mugs. Blue. Dark, navy blue. Almost worthless– $.99 each from Walmart. Drinks cool off too fast. Lesson learned. You get what you pay for, right? You get what you pay for.
“Can I make it? / Damn right / I’ll be on the next flight / sittin’ next to Vanna White.”
I haven’t listened to Nelly since… Sagar’s car. God, when? Last fall? Night, driving down Prarie. Lowes on the right, lit up bright. Subs thumping. I’m in the back seat, Carter in the front, Sagar driving. Blue receiver, flashing. Driving. And all the world is right. High school, Cheyenne night. And the world’s right. There’s a wisdom in it, really.
“oh-oh / oh-oh / I’m a sucker for corn-rows / and manicured toes / e / i / un-da-lay undalay undalay / momma e i ei / oh-oh”
Avenues. Night. Beige house on the right. They have a Corvette. How many times have I seen that car? How many times have I walked past it? In Sagar’s car. Back seat. Sagar driving. Bright blue receiver, flashing in the night. An internal quiet, the external boom. Two subs. Ported box. Nelly. And again the world is right. Now I don’t know why we were there– it doesn’t matter. The reason is long past. The moment lives on. Friends. Car. Avenues. Cheyenne. Night. Nelly. Those were the days.
“Those were the days my friends / we thought they’d never end / we’d sing and dance forever and a day / we’d live the life we choose / we’d fight and never lose / for we were young and sure to have our way.”
Driving. Night. The road from Billings to Bozeman. Open to the right. Back from Cheyenne. Back to Bozeman. Cheyenne: happiness, new things, remembering the old. Bozeman: New, but adventure? Adventure, but new? Where are you going? Where going? Where? Night. A passenger, but alone.
“And I’d give up forever to touch you / cuz i know you feel me somehow / you’re the closet to heaven / that i’ll ever be / and I don’t want to go home right now.”
Driving. Bozeman. Daytime. Mountains. New roads, in the foothills. The heights of the Brigers to my left, all of Bozeman to my right. No passenger, alone, but not lonely. Life is changed, but there’s a beauty to it. This is good. This is good. Smile. Turn, new road. Further in the foothills. My favorite instrumental interlude. And life is good.
There’s homework to be done. Always homework to be done. There’s a mountain dew bottle to my right. My camera is there also. Outside, people play football in the courtyard and it’s night. My business card, tattered, worn and now almost torn in two– separated in two, but still connected.
What are you thinking? What thinking? What?
So I saw her today, or more accurately, she saw me. I’d seen her earlier, walking into campus, presumably to some media theatre arts class. It’s entirely unavoidable that I should see her: leaving food service, standing in line in front of me for coffee, sitting across the room, her car parked near my door. Ten minutes later, I walk into Wilson hall and she’s there. Being the oblivious type, it’s doubtful if she’s so much as noticed me since our official “fuck-offs” some weeks ago. Obliviousness didn’t save her today. I open the door and enter, and there she is, standing. Waiting. She sees me, and for the briefest moment there’s a look of surprise and uncertainty. The moment passes, and she regains her composure: a mix between refusal to see me and cold defiance. Myself, I nodded as I always do when I see someone I know but I have no to time stop and talk–amicably: an acknowledgement. I walked down the hall, carrying her in my mind for a few minutes, wondering. Does she hate me? Is she indifferent? How is she dealing with this? How am I dealing with this. And then she was gone. “Hello, Laura.” “Hi there, Mark.” “Bonjour, Monsieur Pinet.” “Bonjour, class.”
I shuold have been studying for my chem test all day. Thus:
I developed that in like the last hour. It’s kinda useless at this point, but hopefully it’ll gain some utility with time.
This is quite amazing. I’m teetering on the brink of happiness (a quite amazing, in and of itself, especially when contrasted to my state of mind a mere three weeks ago). I feel a little stressed, and I feel like a thoroughly normal person at present. And it’s great. So check this: for the second night in a row, I went to sleep (it was a quite short night’s sleep for me, but I did go to bed just the same), I woke up in the morning, and I went to class.
Yeah. Like Neo says: “Whoa!”
It’s a big deal because, well, it’s the first time in upwards of two months that I’ve done the normal sleep, go to class, go to work cycle. And it’s a wonderful feeling.
The chemistry test on Wednesday is going to be my sad undoing, but that’s ok. After going to ALL my classes and eating lunch, I went back to the quad and jammed on my guitar for a while. It’s amazing how quickly a lot of this stuff has come back– I’m almost as good now as I was two years ago when I quit. By the time I go back for Christmas, if I keep things up, I’ll be better than I was. Whoo!
I’m not sure if I did well or not my English exam– I’ll know Wednesday, one way or the other, and regardless I have some extra credit that should help me out. The test consisted of writing four short essays. As always, I mis-managed my time, and ended up writing like a page and a half for the first essay and all of four inches for the last essay. *french accent* How like life.
I need to get back to working on my T&C Presentation. I like the idea I have, but it’s going to take some time to make it into the speech I want it to be. Ta ta!
“Bush is smart. I don’t think that Bush will ever be impeached, ’cause unlike Clinton, Reagan, or even his father, George W. is immune from scandal. Because, if George W. testifies that he had no idea what was going on, wouldn’t you believe him?” —Jay Leno
“President Bush is asking Congress for $80 billion dollars to re-build Iraq. And when you make out that check, remember there are two L’s in Halliburton.”
President Bush has said that he does not need approval from the UN to wage war, and I’m thinking, well, hell, he didn’t need the approval of the American voters to become president, either.”
“President Bush is going to establish elections there in Iraq. He’s going to rebuild the infrastructure. He’s going to create jobs. He said if it works there, he’ll try it here.”
David Letterman
“The president finally explained why he sat in that classroom on 9/11 for 7 minutes after he was told the country was under attack. He said he was ‘collecting his thoughts.’ What a time to start a new hobby.'” —Bill Maher
“When Stevie Wonder took the stage at the Kennedy Center, President Bush waved to him. Realizing his faux pas, President Bush turned to his wife and said, ‘Oh my God, do you think he saw that?'” —Tina Fey. Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update”
They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people – and neither do we. – George W. Bush
HALLE BERRY: If she makes any more muck along the lines of Gothika and Catwoman, the Academy should send Berry a self-addressed stamped envelope and a letter requesting the return of her Oscar. –FilmThreat
I keep thinking about something my mother, an 8th grade civics teacher, said to me years ago, “A nation usually gets the leader it deserves.”
This idea makes me uneasy. –a random blog
Curiosity
may have killed the cat; more likely
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on litter of kittens, predictably.
…
(keep reading)
