sit with elders of the gentle race this world has seldom seen

just a quick post before i go to bed. mercy's graduation was last night, so congratulations to all of them. it was nice, only an hour and fifteen minutes, which was nothing compared to oak hills' last year. that night we all went on a b&b riverboats cruise from 11:30-2:30 (yes, a three hour tour). the we being about 170 people concisting of the mercy seniors and one guest each for those that wanted to bring one. it was a blast, i had a good time hanging out with jess and all her friends. there were also some guys there (ryan r, kurt, martin) that i hadn't seen in awhile, so it was cool catching up with them. i got home at 4 am, which was awesome. then work today at 1. that wasn't bad, but we did work that was pretty much pointless: we smoothed out dirt and gravel on some paths that got washed out by the rain, but it's all just gonna get washed out soon because the stupid government office personnel didn't want to give us more gravel to work with. stupid administrators and their plush air conditioned offices. oh well, we wasted the last hour or so sitting around so that was nice. i'm really liking the job so far, so hopefully that continues. anyway, i can't remember the last time i got to go to bed at 11:30, so goodnight.

i could listen to "achilles last stand" by zeppelin till my ears started bleeding. the song is to my ears what a bag of sour patch kids is to my tongue, pure bliss. mmmm, sour patch kids. bonham's drumming is just so amazing, how does one band manage to get both one of the greatest drummers AND guitarists ever? not to mention robert plant, what a hilariously great frontman. and they broke up five years befoer i was even born. *sniff*

ride a white mare in the footsteps of dawn

this week has been going pretty well so far. cicada bashing was loads of fun, except when i had one attack me and almost fly in my mouth. apparently that rumor is true. pof curse it probably had a lot to do with the fact that i was running around with my badmitten racket, yelling like an idiot. my big open mouth is probably hard to miss. then that night austin, doug and i gnomed horgan's front yard for her birthday, with the 15 lawn gnomes that we got from the dollar store. it was pretty sweet. my idea, don't let doug tell you otherwise. :D

the cappies award show was last night. if you don't know, it's basically like a mini-oscars (or tonies i guess) award show for high school theater, and it has a bunch of area school involved. mercy was nominated for 11 awards, and won six of them. unfortunately Jess was robbed of the best featured (supporting) actress in a play by some girl from another school whose part seemed to consist of a bunch of screaming, which is apparently what good talent means. mercy was also robbed of the overall best play award by a sycamore, who didn't win any other awards the whole night, so i'm not sure how that works. anyway, her graduation is tonight, followed by a party on a boat down on the river, so that should be cool.

wow, it just randomly started pouring out of nowhere down here. i'm sitting in langsam, when all of a sudden i hear this loud pounding noise on the skylight. it seems there's also a leak in the ceiling nearby, because there's this really annoying dripping sound that is driving me crazy.

the girl on this computer before me left her instant messenger screen name logged on. not smart. it's a good thing i'm not a huge jerk, or i could really screw her over. actually... i have no idea whether or not she is actually a she.

i hate to beat a dead horse, but i nearly did a dance of glee when i found THIS about michael moore. the man fancies himself as a big defender of american workers, and then proceeds to outsource the design and hosting of his webpage to Canadian companies. why not an American company if you're really so big on helping the workers of America, mr. moore? oh wait, it's because you're a big hypocritical jerk, who cares nothing about the actual people you claim to help, and simply have an agenda to push to further your own personal ends. but of course, when the media if hyping farenheit 9/11 in it's attempts to help you sway the election against Bush, no one will bother to point out your blatant hypocrisy. after all, the media would never do anything to discredit your propaganda.

dangit, it's still raining. i don't want to walk all the way to blegen from here. :(

with a purple umbrella and a fifty-cent hat

i would have to say that right now, michael moore has probably jumped into the top 5 of my "people in america i loathe and despise" list. heck, maybe even the top 3. this man makes my blood boil. talk about someone with a destructive political agenda. apparently this guy really has an axe to grind with the bush administration (which doesn't make him any different than the rest of the leading liberals). i was taking a look at that Brain Terminal blog rob found, and i found a nice article outlining moore's vendetta against bush and the entire republican party in general.

let's face it, someone who assigns the blame for 9/11 by saying ""I think Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Lott and the Republican Party owe the American people and the families of those 3,000 dead a huge f***ing apology." is a FREAKIN' MORON. @$&#! i seriously get so pissed off when i read something like that. if you've had your head anyway but stuck up your own arse for the past decade, you'd know that if it wasn't for the clinton administration's complete and utter lack of action to capture bin laden, we wouldn't be in this mess right now. blame bush for 9/11? how in the world can you do that, when osama was behind multiple terrorrist attacks against american targets during clinton's presidency. what kind of idiot would blame gingrich and lott. come on they were what, congressmen (senators)? what the heck are they supposed to do? they can't authorize action against something like that. how about blaming clinton, the man who was in charge?! grrr! anger! rage-ahol! mmmm, rage-ahol.


no, i don't actually have a list of "people in america i loathe and despise". but i should.

little stars that burn the holes in my soul

first day of work at delhi park was today. pretty good stuff! i spent most of the time learning to drive the gator and the tractor, which were pretty cool. doug and i spent awhile trimming bushes and cleaning up some gravel, which wasn't too bad. a little hot out, but nothin' compared to how bad it's gonna be in the summer.

i officially have a major! i finally gave in and declared a history major on a whim monday. not because that's what i'm sure i want to go into, but because i wanted some more priority when i registered for fall classes tomorrow.

played UT2004 online for the first time tonight, and it was pretty fun. it's not going to unseat counter-strike as my favorite online game, but it was good nonetheless. invasion was pretty cool with live people, i didn't like it much with bots. onslaught mode with real people was sweet, although usually one-sided. but i did get in one server where both teams consistently won matches. in fact, one round my team was pushed back all the way to our own powercore, and even when it looked hopeless, we pushed back and turned the tables on the other team. pwnage.



so did you hear about michael moore's new liberal propaganda, "farenheit 9/11"? yeah... i hate him.

see my heart i decorate it like a grave

ok, so like justin and rob, i decided to try out one of the new blogger templates. visually it's pretty catchy, but the template code is so confusing that i can't figure out where or how to add links and comments. so comments are down for the moment, and we'll see how this goes...

things have never been so swell, and i have never felt this well

i got the job at delhi, rock on! i start on tuesday, and it's gonna be awesome workin the half-days when doug and i are the only two workers left in the park. that's going to be a recipe for disaster.

i'm feelin' really burnt out on school. i'm tired of writing all these papers and taking all these tests, because i don't feel like i'm accomplishing anything. for one, i don't really learn anything. i've always thought that the education system is pointless the way someone (me) can get through by regurgitating facts back on tests and cranking out bs papers. really, i'm just getting frustrated on the whole lack of major thing. history? i really don't think i want to teach. sounds boring. but what else do you do with history? political science? maybe, but still what do you do with it? besides, i'd be so angry and bitter all the time with all the left-wing professors shoving their opinions at me that i would be miserable. so what else? i don't just want a major, i want an idea of what i want to freakin' do for a career. college is too expensive and time consuming to simply wing it, pick a major, and wait to see where i find myself.

of course, a lot of this frustration probably has a lot to do with my lack of quality time with God. for one, i need something appealing to go through (read) and then the time and motivation to do it. it's not that i'm not talking to him, i'm doin' a whole lot of that. i've been searching for guidance in a number of issues, but i'm just not feeling any leading. i'm sure he's talking, but i must not really be listening, because all i can come up with are my feelings, which flip-flop more than john kerry.

curl like smoke and breathe again

just a few random things. first, i spent the better part of the afternoon working with my brother to get all the spyware crap off of my computer, but i think we finally have the majority of it gone. there was way more than i thought. no more imesh for me. and i'm now going to monitor my computer with four different programs, instead of just adaware.

second, the delhi job is pretty much in the bag. i know i should be thankful for the opportunity to make all this money, but i have mixed feelings about the whole thing. i'm not at all excited about working full time seven days a week this summer. i really think it's gonna to wear me down and seriously put a dent in the whole fun factor of summer break. plus heat and allergies are going to suck big time. hopefuly it'll be worth it.

violence in all hands, embrace it if need be

THIS is for all you Bush haters who love to rip on him for the economy. i love the fact that when bush's unemployment rate is at 5.6% people acted like it was insanely high, and when clinton's was that way they acted like it was an awesome job by him.

in other news, new developments in the war on spyware in dave's computer. it seems when i came back from church today, somehow my screen had been contorted into some strange shape, roughly looking like )_( . so i'm about this close to just chucking the thing out the window. i guess later tonight i'll have to get more programs to kill this crap, because adaware is still failing me.

too much trippin' and my soul's worn thin

so the delhi people told me at my job interview last week that they would get in touch with me this week, which of course they did not. so i called them today, and the lady basically told me that they were impressed with my interview, but they needed to make sure everyone was going to get all the hours they wanted and they were still working things out, blah blah blah, so they were planning on reaching a decision by the middle of next week and they'd get ahold of me then. yeah... right.

i guess we'll see how that goes. i'd be great to get this job, and i'm not gonna be real happy if i don't, but i suppose i need to start looking around for alternatives just in case. i don't really have any idea where else to look for a full-time summer job. nick & tom's is actually worse in the summer; business is super slow compared to the winter, so they need less people for each shift.

i'm so sick of freakin' spyware. i thought i'd got rid of it all, and now it seems to be back in full force. random popups all the time that the google toolbar does not block, and they're not all from imesh, because they show up even when it's not running. oh, and my homepage keeps getting reset to some site, but the site always has an error and never loads. and adaware either doesn't pick this stuff up or doesn't remove it properly because it's still here. i'm so fed up that i decided i'm going to get rid of imesh. rob told me there's an imesh lite version without spyware, so i may give that a try. i also downloaded itunes, but i probably will want an alternative (free) program to use along with that anyway.

shut my mouth and strike the demons

this year has so much incredible entertainment goodness coming out, it's rediculous.

needless to say, if Half-Life 2 and DOOM 3 are released this year (June?) it will be a glorious year just for that. in fact, HL2 would do it for me. besides that, there are a ton of other great FPS games coming out this year. UT 2004 is still rockin my world, and i haven't even bothered to play that online yet. it should keep me rockin' for a very long time. i played the demo for Far Cry, which was sweet, and since it's been called "the best single-player experience since Half-Life" i'm really eager to get my hands on it. as much as i was addicted to Counter-Strike for over three years, i've always been a bigger fan of a good single-player campaign. even so, Battlefield Vietnam looks sweet, and i would love to score a copy of that. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is looking like it could be one of those great games that comes out of nowhere, with sweet looking graphics and a cool sounding storyline. of course, then there's Halo 2, which will lead to many many late weekend box parties. plus two great looking Star Wars games: Republic Commando and Battlefront that will hopefully rock. then there's still more, such as Joint Operations, Soldner, Goldeneye 2 and probably even more.

this year also has a few promising RTS games. first off, Battle For Middle-Earth, which looks incredible. then there's Rome: Total War, a great looking game (which reminds me that i still need to pick up Medieval: Total War as well). The add-on for Rise of Nations, Thrones & Patriots just came out. for some reason i've never played RoN, which is pretty rediculous since i'm a huge fan of the Civ series and RTS games

and there's stilll dozens more. Starcraft: Ghost may finally come out this year, and what could be cooler than Splinter Cell in the Starcraft universe? Madden NFL 2005 will hopefully be even better than 2004. Midway Arcade Treasures 2 looks like it could be a cool bundle of old-skool gaming goodness. Full Spectrum Warrior looks very promising as some good tactical squad combat. Kotor 2 may not be coming out till 2005, but i think i'll have enough to hold me over till then.

then of course, there's the amazing DVD goodness of the Star Wars Trilogy in September!! who's gonna watch all three on the 21st with me? of course, Last Samurai just came out, Return of the King soon with Extended later on. and Velvet Revolver's "Contraband" this June. no wonder my bank account is looking so slim. looks like i need to start prioritizing my purchases.

it feels good to get all that out.

i'm never alone, i'm alone all the time

i'm still waiting to hear back from the delhi people about the job. they told me at the end of my interview last friday that they would call me sometime this week and let me know, so i'm calling tomorrow if i haven't heard from them by then. i really need this job, because it would be really helpful to make a lot of money this summer. if i don't get a job there i have no idea where else i should try and get one.

the reds game wasn't the best, to say the least. the lost 6-2, and they only scored those 2 runs in the 9th, and we left after the 8th inning. up until then, they only had 2 hits the entire game. seeing the brewers guy hit a grand slam was kinda cool, only because i don't ever think i've seen one in person before. the weather was fairly wet and cold, but the rain stopped about the 5th or 6th inning, and could have been a lot worse. the catered food was good as ever, though. besides, sounds like i didn't miss anything since everyone got down to see Bush too late, and got closed out by the fire marshall.

so i've been thinking about getting a guitar. i was talking to my brother about it, since he knows a lot about them, and trying to get an idea on what i should buy. i think i finally would have the discipline to learn how to play; unlike my 2 month phase of trying to learn to play bass in sophmore year (although I still remember how to play Teen Spirit and Brain Stew). one thing that does worry me is that i won't have the patience to learn all the scales, chords, and all that, and instead i'll just wanna be jimmy page from the start... which will never ever happen. besides, buying a guitar mostly depends on whether or not i get this job.

the words you say never seem to live up to the ones inside your head

i'm off to see the Reds take on the brewers tonight with my dad and brother, so hopefully we win and it doesn't rain. although it's gonna take a lot for this game to be better than last year's game i went to, when larkin had his fabulous pinch hit, walk-on homerun in the bottom of the ninth to win the game. beautiful.

i am bummed about missing Bush speak. rob, doug, austin, jess, jen, jenny, and just about everyone else in the world are all going down to see it. it'd be cool to see any president speak in person, but the fact that it's George W. Bush, in my opinion one of the best presidents we've had, makes me want to be there even more. but oh well, hopefully i'll have another 4 years to maybe see him speak.