Rags Dropped from TheShroud13's Prismatic Collection

[NouveauShroud]

Or: TheShroud13's Blog

This is going to be a place for me to dump poetic drafts as that's generally the manner in which I blog, although you'll get quite a few prose bloggings from me as well.

Today, I get to indulge in the wonders of a good meal purchased by the 'rents. Thus, there is little to get me down. Cheers!

[TheShroud13]

The Tigers are kickin' freakin' ass this year! After getting interested in baseball during the world series between the Diamondbacks and the Yankees, I'm glad I can finally cheer my local team! The Tigers are a big reason this summer has been sweet for me, that and being back home and not at uni where I feel terribly unwelcome. In any case, I'm going swimming tonight to get my body in shape, yeah, it's good stuff.

[Black Mamba]

This is going to be my favorite blog. Shroud cracks me up.

[TheShroud13]

For anyone that doesn't know the "Amen Break", head here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac. It's so f'in sweet. I'm sure you've heard it, even if you don't know what it was. I love it. (It's better listened to than watched)

Tigers won tonight! Again! Whoooo! Clemens goes down (although he still pitched a good one)

A good day, although I was a little pissed when the pool I was supposed to swim in was totally occupied by swim lessons and water aerobics. Lame. Back to yoga for my athletic development! As for my cardiovascular health, to death with it!

[TheShroud13]

Okay, what's new in Shroudland? Well, Tigers lost last night in an extremely sloppy game against the bloody Pirates (really bad team) at that.

Went to a party Friday evening, had myself a good little time, didn't drink too much (3 shots vodka) nor did I talk all that much, but I still had a good time listening to the folks exchange their stories, and played a little Punch-Out!!! so that was fun.

Saturday, didn't do a lot. Bummed around and watched Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Evening was kinda obnoxious, got randomly depressed while trying to sleep which made it tough to fall asleep, when I did I had an awesome dream that when I woke up was kinda sad that it didn't happen. * sigh * In any case today's going well, and that's all that's new on this end.

[Totz]

when I did I had an awesome dream that when I woke up was kinda sad that it didn't happen. * sigh *

Man, that sucks. The same thing happened to me a while ago. :(

And trust me when I say this, it was as awesome as awesome gets. :(

[NanoSuke'62]

I've had some insanely awesome dreams. Best escapist entertainment ever.

Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for the link to that documentary. Quite fascinating.

[TheShroud13]

My pleasure, I was hoping someone would check that out, I thought it was a pretty neat deal as well!

[TheShroud13]

Art died the moment it was coined, and
artists: before you twist my words into the sweet
condemnation of commercialization,
let the ink leave no doubt:
I snarl at you, not at purses.

As the audience (astute at recognizing when
technique is an aspiration for respect
rather than an augmentation of communication)
is treated as an obstacle to be overcome,
the artist acts with lunacy, like
priestly plants calling the moon to the sun's eternal eclipse.

Once cultivated in public,
grown in gardens around fountains,
art tired of being mistaken for flowers (or anything recognizable really)
and took to the winds to assert its identity.
Not yet has it returned to the ground,

though the true joys of creativity remain.
Artists still linger with their sullen heads in the air,
intoxicated by the smell of distant flowers
listening to a fountain dribbling, its whisper fading with each echo.
They wonder why I don't hear it, but they forget I do.
I just choose to ignore it, and embrace instead the
clamorous scene of popular sight and sound for
I've been one to speak with the wind and
prefer dialogue.

--------------------------------------------------------

A first draft of a poem I'm writing regarding my general present disdain for the artistic community. I don't really like the progression of the idea that well, and want to portray art less as something that was alive in the past but has now faded so much as I want to portray art as a generally poor idea in general. I also want to emphasize the folly of creating art that is mainly for a community solely artists. Either way, I like the start :)

[Kaibigan]

I love the first stanza. Two thumbs, way up!

[Black Mamba]

Awsome poem Shroud. I normally am not a fan of peotry, mainly because its corny and (to me) makes no sense. However this poem I enjoyed, as it has an idea I've never heard before.

Are you talking about the artistic community (those whose poems are corny and make no sense) or the idea of art in general?

[Kaibigan]

Have you read 'letters to a young poet' by Rilke? It has some great advice on writing poetry (as the name suggests).

[TheShroud13]

We're going to combine normal blogging with some answer responses here for an all around good time. I'll start with the normal blog.

Last few days have been rather unpleasant, at least when it has come to sleeping. I've been going to bed anywhere from 5:00 AM to 7:00 AM, and often wake up somewhere around 10:00 before getting tired and falling asleep again. My mind gets very preoccupied when I try to fall asleep, it's rather annoying.

Let's see, what else is new . . . went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest which was a pretty good time, although the movie was a bit overlong. It was the first time I had seen my friends in a week, but unlike at college, where such a period of time without seeing friends outside of school would make me very uncomfortable, it never bothered me here. I feel very appreciated by my friends here, and even when I don't see them often, I never fear that they don't want me around, which is not so true at college. It's why I love home <3.

I've been pretty irritated lately because my mind will not get off the subject of a certain girl from college who, in all my time of knowing her, I've likely not spoken to for more than two hours combined. I don't understand why I should be preoccupied so, but it's rather irritating, and makes it very difficult to concentrate. Thinking about folks you're not going to see for a while, especially those where there is really no legitimate reason for consciensiousness, is really not something I'm fond of, and it is definitely having a negative impact on my mood.

Are you talking about the artistic community (those whose poems are corny and make no sense) or the idea of art in general?

Art in general really. I see it in music, I see it in poetry, I see it in film, I see it in visual art - just so many things that artists are doing that audiences aren't really catching on to. Basically it's art for the artists, where technique is becoming more important that communication, and I don't like either of those things one bit. These pursuits are also being considered more artistic than anything that caters to an audience, and I think it's absurd. True art doesn't require a degree to be understood, and I think it actually reduces it's value. That's not to say that all pieces of art should not have aspects that cater to the more learned audience, but if there is no first layer which appeals to all (or at least most, all is a rather ridiculous term). Obviously there's an audience for the 'less accesible' stuff, so there can't be everything wrong with it, but they seem to believe it's better than everything else because there's no concession to the masses, but I think that's garbage, and one of the big reasons that creative institutions are having such a hard time staying afloat. Thank you for asking, and I appreciate your feedback on my work ^_^

Have you read 'letters to a young poet' by Rilke? It has some great advice on writing poetry (as the name suggests).

I have not. I will have to look into it for certain. Thank you for bringing it up to me, and thank you for your kind comment on my poem!

[TheShroud13]

I plan to once the school year starts :) I made the idiot mistake of not grabbing a number last year, and would feel really creepy getting it from someone else and then calling. Possibly because I did it once before, and it got me the stalker label for quite some time * laughs *

[TheShroud13]

There was a lot of rain last night. Before the storm hit my area I could see lightning above the clouds but there was no rain in my area at all. It was humid, yes, but not a bit of water yet. But the lightning was going at it pretty hardcore, flashin' all over the sky. I don't think there was even a complete second when the sky was illuminated by at least one bolt of lightning. I think God might be a raver.

So really strange thing happened last night. A lot of folks dream, right? Well I dream too, but last night I seemed to have my dream moment before I go to bed. What was really strange about it is my mind usually isn't very vivid as far as images go but this time it was. It was a sexual fantasy (so skip this part if you don't want to hear about it, the next paragraph will be clean. I'm not going to be graphic, but if you don't want to imagine me and sex together, move along) and I was foolin' around with this one girl, we both conceded that it would be just for the sex and nothing else and so we fooled around doing a few jolly things both of us explaining that we weren't that experienced, as in not at all experienced, (I was making an assumption about her sure, but I'm allowed to, it's a freakin' fantasy) and enjoyed the exploration of it all. SO while we're getting to it, I call out to a girl I happen to fancy in real life, and in that instant she appears in my mind, ten times more clear than the rest of the fantasy, and far clearer than any memory I had been able to conjure up of her previously. It's one of the few times I've ever seen something with my mind. It was kinda creepy. It was also weird to have a fantasy within a fantasy. Either way it was all very dream like and very strange.

Not a lot has been going on with me though. I'm taking a lifeguarding class, and feel so strange because I'm the only person in the class born in the 80s. One was born before, the rest were all born in the 90s. I'm gettin' old, last time I checked folks born in the 90s could barely even stay afloat in their beds, much less in the water. Oy vay.

That's it from my side of things. I've been neglecting this poor blog, I'm always so bad with updating these :lol:

[Neo Locke]

That's crazy... dreams are so wierd sometimes. I once had a chain of about 7 dreams of waking up from a dream... like I'd dream I woke up from a dream of waking up from a dream of waking up from a dream etc. etc... that had me questioning reality for a friggin' week.

[TheShroud13]

Uuuuuurrrrrrrghhhhhhhh. I'm feeling fairly well today, but the two days previous to yesterday were torturous. Nothing actually happened to make me feel that way, it's just one of those periods of self doubt that's just bloody obnoxious, and practically paralysing. I say practically paralysing because I'm really in no position to do anything anyway, so if I were paralysed, it wouldn't matter all that much at all. But yeah, sleeping didn't come easy, and mental instability was the norm, and blech, it was just a nasty time.

Things are better today though, although I'm still way tired from the poor sleep from the bad days. Did the swimming thing today, that's always fun. My bro's been playing a lot of Kingdom Hearts lately, I'll probably give it a runthrough once he gets through, I'm lookin' forward to that a bit. That's it for now, Shroud out 8)

Side note: Went out to eat on Saturday or Sunday, had a bite of my friend's steak; most delicious piece of steak I've ever tasted. It was incredible.

[TheShroud13]

Okay, from most important to least important, here's what's on my mind.

Tomorrow: SNAKES ON A PLANE!!!

Two Weeks from Tomorrow: Moving into university. I'm half excited and half dreading the return to college. Pros - I get a chance to go after the romantic prospect I mentioned earlier, I get to get back to learning some stuff, I'll have a computer in a room to myself again. Cons - I'm going to miss my friends from back home (for whatever reason we seem to have a better synergy than I have with most chaps at college, possibly from the history, although I've probably spent as much time with both groups), I didn't have a job this summer and if I can't find one at school I'm screwed, stress will be back :)

Not a lot more blogging for today, Shroud out!

[migglie]

I like how that film is a landmark in your calendar. As for going back to uni, I share your ambivalence. For my own sense of peace of mind, I need the direction that the regularity of university. As for the romantic object, you will charm the strumpet easily, stud.

[TheShroud13]

Totally destroyed the lifesaving exam. Also got free freakin' Dairy Queen, doesn't get much better than that. Saddest thing about it though, folks were cheatin' the whole time. Am I the only one that thinks cheating on a livesaving exam is pathetic?

Lookin' forward to tomorrow. Probably going to see my friends again, and going to see the best mof'in movie ever. I can't wait to go. The summer from here on out is lazy has heck (as if it wasn't already).

[TheShroud13]

I feel betrayed. I feel like I've been left at the altar. The beginning of the fabulous rest of my life has been torn asunder.

My friends saw Snakes on a Plane without me.

[TheShroud13]

So to make up for not seeing Snakes on a Plane today, I did the second best thing and saw Ted Nugent. Nobody makes hyper-conservatism as entertaining as the Nuge.

Highlights from the show:

-Walked on stage to a recording of "America, Fuck Yeah!"

-Mocked all the fans of country western in the house saying, "I saw all you fatties get lost and show up here." Then proceeded to play "Klstrphnky" and continued to mock country western throughout the song.

-Cover of "Soul Man"!

-Mocked Willie Nelson (who was playing in a venue a couple towns over) for being a 'dumb hippie'.

-Said there's only one kind of dream worth living. "Who's ever heard of the French Dream?"

-Lauded George W. Bush as his favourite cowboy.

-During the song "Kiss My Ass" a cardboard cut-out of Osama Bin Laden was raised from his amps, which he proceeded to shoot with a bow and arrow.

All in all, it was a great show. Nobody makes bigotry cool like the Nuge.

[Don]

It's a shame you didn't get to see SOAP but at least the concert made up for it. Was that a last minute thing or did you plan to attend this after seeing SOAP.

[TheShroud13]

Finally saw Snakes on a Plane last Saturday, and it was everything I hoped it to be!

Last night, my friends and I had our last big hang out until we all went back to college. We started by going to Osaka, a local Japanese steakhouse (non-chain manner) that I personally think is a lot better than a lot of the chains that get better reviews in the paper. My meal was absolutely DELICIOUS. I had the best cut of steak I'd had in a long time. The rice was flavourful, as were the veggies, and noodles ^_^ It was a great meal.

We then went to go see Little Miss Sunshine which was far more entertaining than I expected it to be! I usually don't enjoy dysfunctional family movies, especially not dysfunctionally family vacation movies, but I had a good time with this one. It was a bit heavy handed at times, but the entertainment factor, and the charm of the characers overrid everything for me :D

Afterwords my friends and I hung out, reminiscing about old times until 3 A.M. It was a good time! Felt good :)

[migglie]

Glad to see that you eventually came to enjoy the definitive cinematic release of this year. Any shots at Oscars? ;)

As for Japanese cuisine, do you guys get Wagamama restaurants over there? An overpriced yet pretty tasty chain. Still, as you say nothing can beat an independant eatery. Man, you made me hungry for Japanese bad. Gotta love those chat-into-the-night-til-you-fall-asleep episodes though.

[TheShroud13]

We totaly would have stayed longer, but I had to drive one of the chums home, and didn't have the gas to both go back and then home. Whooops.

[TheShroud13]

So tommorrow's the day I head back to uni. * sigh * I half miss home already. At the same time, I'm excited to get back up there, so who knows how things will go. I've pretty much gone over the entire scenario before so I'm not going to repeat it, but this is a year in which some things are going to happen. Hopefully I'll be more vague next time.

Shadow Hearts: Covenant has been my thing to do lately, and it's been rocking it pretty severely. Only one Man Festival and one Final Dungeon left! For reference "The Fate" is a kickin' tune :) As is "His Name is the Gran Papillon!"

So yeah, no idea when everything will be operational at the new haunt, I'll talk to y'all whene'er I'm back up to speed.

[migglie]

Best of luck with a pronto unloading. You moving back to the same dorm or what? There's plenty of things to miss about home but as you mentioned somewhere, there's opportunity afoot.

I hope that you pursue that person you were thinking about, if the chance arises. Is this your final year of study? With any luck, you'll be fully functional on the internet soon. There's lots more confession potential to beat out of you.

[TheShroud13]

I'm moving into a home with several other folks. They're partiers, so that might cause some trouble, but I figure the dorms are just as bad as far as disrespectful circumstances go - this way I at least get my own room and know I can hang with the folks when they're sober. Maybe have a drink or two when I've got some down time and won't be singing for a while.

In what will likely be my last post until my internet is restores (although we'll see) I now present my reflections on Shadow Hearts: Covenant! (Also, I'm temporarily the forum's post leader ;) Thank you confession chair!)

UNMARKED SPOILER WARNING

First of all, great game. I haven't had a gaming experience like this in a while. Perhaps because I hadn't had money to buy a new game, but probably more because this game was kickin'. I'd put it up in a club with a lot of other great games. It's definitely an improvement on Shadow Hearts. While the first was an interesting as far as events went, it was a weak drama, and I got through the game with minimal emotional response. With this one, not the case at all. Let's go into some details.

Battle System - Solid stuff. I'm a little pissed off I missed out on an accessory because I sucked so much at the judgement ring, but ooooooh well. I rarely found a moment in the game where I wasn't having fun fighting. Configuring crests was annoying though, but that's about my only complaint with things. The game was pretty easy, but I really didn't mind ;)

Dungeon Design - A+ hands down. The only dungeon that I truly had a terrible time with was Idar Flamme. Besides that, everything offered a good balance between obstacles and not bogging me down.

Characters - I would have liked a little bit more out of Karin than "I <3 Yuri" and "Thinking about my dead family makes me kinda sad", but I still ended up sympathizing with her in the end. More Kurando would have been great as well. Anastasia and Joachim were very suitable supporting characters. My biggest complaint in this area? Gepetto and Lucia. Terrible in combat, and absolute non-factors in the story. I'll give you guys credit though, you almost made the Man Festival challenging.

Yuri is what makes the characters section kick ass. I don't think I need to explain why. Also, Nicolai was a pretty sweet character, and Kato was a very respectable final foe. Seeing him go down at the end, though not nearly as satisfying as bashing ass-muncher Rasputin or getting revenge for that mistletoe curse, there was something so very right about the final foe being Kato.

Story - It does the job. Nothing feels like it doesn't belong, all the twists feel well calculated, most everything is clear, there's intrigue. Nothing to complain about here. A perfect vessel for the emotional tale of Yuri.

Dialogue - Very characterized text, all the characters sound like themselves. The game does a great job of integrating humour. (The FMV flashbacks with the scribble drawings included as well are priceless, not really dialogue but still.) The script doesn't feel like it quite fits the time, but that's nothing I can't deal with. There was also a lot more disparity between the dialogue and the subtitles for my liking, but again, no big deal.

Music - Better than the original, although still too much dripping water with some strings high and some strings low ambiant yawners. Also, the music for Petrograd needed a bit more Russian flavour. I know St. Petersburg is the westernized Russian city, but still, a little bit more Russia? The battle themes were high quality all around. Some tracks that stood out to me were: Joachim's theme, the tune that plays in Inugami Village (beautiful, and I think there was another one that played during a scene there that was gorgeous), the tune that accompanies Kato's summoning of the final dungeon, the Hermitage tune (even if it wasn't quite Russian enough :p). The non-ambiant tracks were quite awesome. I understand why whoever didn't like "The 3 Karma" in the game didn't like it though. It's way weaker in game than it is on the soundtrack, and weaker still than the n.d.e. version. It wasn't impressive in game at all.

Voice acting - Very good job. Some occasional things bothered me, but very rare they were. Yuri's screaming voice didn't feel honest to me.

General things to mention . . .

-The Man Festival was absolutely everything I hoped it would be. I'm sure Christianity would love to be associated with that baptism ;)

-The scene in which Kato summons the final dungeon is FANTASTIC! Yuri wrecking Rasputin's shield is great as well, but the final dungeon FMV, paired with that music. <3

-I got tearey-eyed a lot over the course of the game. Never could get myself to cry to it though. It's pretty tough for me to get myself to cry.

That's about it. It was a really enjoyable game, certainly in the upper eschelon of RPGs. Now if only more people had played it.

[TheShroud13]

So, I'm back at uni. My bedroom is delciously low budget. I'm sleeping on a futon, and my desk is a card table. It's pretty much amazing. I haven't had a lot of free time, but I've dealt. My classes seem like they're going to be very interesting, and I've been able to swim regularly. Things are quite good so far :)

I was actually quite anxious for the first few days of school. I mean, I always am, but this was more anxiety than I had been used to even. I bumped into the girl I'd been mentioning in this thread for a while the other day though, and haven't felt anxious since then. Yay :) Speaking of that encounter, it went quite well. She seemed very excited to see me (granted she's easily excited in general, but still, good sign none the less), it felt like we just picked up what we started (whatever it was, who knows) last year, and all sorts of good things. Do I know where it's going? Not really. Do I have any classes with her? No. Have I asked for her number yet? No (frankly, I think it'd be a little weird to do first time seein' 'er in a while). But this was a pretty decent first run in, and made me feel quite happy :)

[insertnamehere]

(frankly, I think it'd be a little weird to do first time seein' 'er in a while). You know i would think that to, but women sometime suprise me alot, Also what do you mean your bedroom is low budget this time. do they model your room

[migglie]

This conquest sounds hopeful Shroud...is it an established fact that there's mutuality there? Or is it hoped for/suspected?

As for low budget living...relish it, I say. When else in your life will you be able to lower yourself to the accepting the standards of a student. Be humble, my friend ;). Any interesting musical projects looming on the horizon?

[TheShroud13]

To INH: I mean the things I'm using to furnish my bedroom are deliciously cheap.

This conquest sounds hopeful Shroud...is it an established fact that there's mutuality there? Or is it hoped for/suspected?

As for low budget living...relish it, I say. When else in your life will you be able to lower yourself to the accepting the standards of a student. Be humble, my friend . Any interesting musical projects looming on the horizon?

To the first. Suspected by body language and other such things. Again, she's easily excited and very emotionally extroverted to begin with, so I have to be somewhat careful, but I feel like there's something there. Then again, I thought the same thing last year and word on the street was that there was a boyfriend (but I kinda assumed that anyway since she was on her cell phone most of the time I saw her in choir, so you know). Either way, I'm gonna see how things go as I see her throughout the year, and such and such.

For the second. <3 low budget. As for musical projects, OY! I'll finish whate'er I have time to. Nothing's being planned at present, as I haven't had time at all recently, but we'll see.

Also, I've gotten semi-addicted to Guitar Hero. Uh oh.

[insertnamehere]

So what happen to your old stuff from last year

[TheShroud13]

So what happen to your old stuff from last year

I was in a dorm room, which was furnished for me, last year.

[TheShroud13]

This week's heroes:

Justin Verlander
Kenny Rogers
Jeremy Bonderman

[Rain]

This week's heroes:

Justin Verlander
Kenny Rogers
Jeremy Bonderman

Amen. Heres hoping this wondrous turn of events (take that ya dirty stinkin Yanks!) lead to a George Steinbrenner pulmonary.

[TheShroud13]

I actually pray for Steinbrenner's health. After all, the longer he's around, the longer the Yankees suck.

Now for a real update in the life of Shroud.

For the most part, university is pleasant thus far. I'm getting to sleep by 12 nightly, and that's doing wonders for my mood. I'm, on average, far happier than I've been in any of my previous two years in Ann Arbor. My housemates are a good bunch as well. The classes I'm taking are quite good as well. My composition class is quite enjoyable - it's moving very slowly, but for a course of this level that only meets once a week, that's a bit expected. I'm kinda missing music theory, but c'est la vie.

Between classes and video games (mostly the latter - as usual, I'm mostly ignoring my studies), I haven't had a lot of time to really work on any of my personal projects but I hope to get back on that pretty soon. Some of my impressions of the games I've been playing lately:

Xenosaga III - Great game. Unlike the first two Xenosagas, and Xenogears; this game actually has a game to go along with the story. The story is also much better told this time along. The dialogue is awkward as ever, the iconology is often awkward, and the philosophy is a bit heavy-handed; but the characters are strong enough to make it all work. It's really moving in its climactic moments, getting me nearly to tears from time to time. There's also a pretty decent selection of music. If you haven't checked this one out, do it!

Guitar Hero - One of the most fun games I've played in my life. If it came down to finding religion and playing this game, I don't know if I could put it down.

Resident Evil 4 - Really fun so far, although I've barely gotten anywhere. Someone told me I looked like one of the characters in this game, but I haven't seen anyone I've resembled at all to this point. Maybe later? Either way, lots of fun shooting stuff.

I've been playing good games lately :)

So the positives taken care of, on to the negative. #1 - The whole romance thing. I rarely ever see the person that has my eye, yet she's still on my mind all the bloody time. F. Ing. Annoy. Ing. Don't believe spell check. Ing is a sentence. I don't understand at all why I would allow such a space in my mind for someone I've maybe spoken to for two to three hours in my life but I do and it gets to me.

Then the big thing. Parties. My house is a pretty big party house, and I have no problem with them holding them. They're as entitled to what makes them happy as I am (so long as they're not abhorrently frequent, which they aren't) - but the whole environment of them makes me uncomfortable. Beyond that, they leave me wholly depressed afterward. I'm much too shy to introduce myself to anyone at these things (though I try), and everytime one of these rolls around I get pissed at myself for being so far behind everyone else in my social development. It's also pretty bad for the ole confidence to watch people willing to introduce themselves to everyone around you, but not you. Ergh. Parties and I don't mix. It probably doesn't help that I'm not particularly fond of the ole alcohol. * shrugs *

In fact, we just hosted a party this Friday and was feeling really ass shitty. Fortunately the Tigers wiped the floor with the Yankees so my mood took a major jump up. Sports rule.

[Piano]

So the positives taken care of, on to the negative. #1 - The whole romance thing. I rarely ever see the person that has my eye, yet she's still on my mind all the bloody time. F. Ing. Annoy. Ing. Don't believe spell check. Ing is a sentence. I don't understand at all why I would allow such a space in my mind for someone I've maybe spoken to for two to three hours in my life but I do and it gets to me.

That's why love songs still sell. Don't worry about this thing, it's normal. Do you want to ask her out?

Then the big thing. Parties. My house is a pretty big party house, and I have no problem with them holding them. They're as entitled to what makes them happy as I am (so long as they're not abhorrently frequent, which they aren't) - but the whole environment of them makes me uncomfortable. Beyond that, they leave me wholly depressed afterward. I'm much too shy to introduce myself to anyone at these things (though I try), and everytime one of these rolls around I get pissed at myself for being so far behind everyone else in my social development. It's also pretty bad for the ole confidence to watch people willing to introduce themselves to everyone around you, but not you. Ergh. Parties and I don't mix. It probably doesn't help that I'm not particularly fond of the ole alcohol. * shrugs *

Well, if you don't like them then don't hold them. However, holding them can be a positive thing, as you get to know new people. You should make an effort to get to know at least one person per party. After all, it's your house and you've let them in - you gotta know who on earth is in your house. Also, those strangers are likely to be friends of friends, so let your friends do the hard work and make them introduce the strangers to you.

[TheShroud13]

So apparently I'm a good dancer.

Yes. That's basically all I've learned since I last updated.

That's why love songs still sell. Don't worry about this thing, it's normal. Do you want to ask her out?

Answer to question: Yes. The problem: The boyfriend (booo-hissss).

[TheShroud13]

So yesterday, I participated as a substitute on the renowned beer pong team "Thor's Hammer". My personal opinion, in retrospect, is that Thor's Hammer is a reference to the pounding in the head that results from a night of sleep after participating in such a spectacle. Such pain >_< Fortunately, a really stellar breakfast has slighted the blow a bit, but still - boo to hangovers!

[TheShroud13]

I'm going to legitimately post here sometime soon, but I just needed somewhere to post this article for now

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/UnNews:Kings_traded_to_NFL

[TheShroud13]

EDIT: oem reader. The edit reason ran out of space, but it should be read along side it.

[TheShroud13]

Just trust me on that last message.

This forum requires that you wait 30 seconds between posts. Please try again in 4 seconds.

[Queen_Garnet]

That used to happen to me a lot Shroud. Whenever I was to post and I just already posted in another thread, it showes this message all the time. But, that didn't happen recently though.

[TheShroud13]

www.umich.edu/~rcwalls/ppali.pdf
www.umich.edu/~rcwalls/water.pdf

Yeah, not much of a blog post. Life's been going extremely well lately though. On the dull side, but I'm happy, so I can't complain too much.

[TheShroud13]

I just had a cup of coffee to keep me up so I could write this psych paper, and honestly, I think I'm going to be kept up more by the pain that my mouth has just gone through than by the caffeine. My goodness I don't like the taste of coffee at all!

[TheShroud13]

Oh hell yes! http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071204/UPDATE/712040427

Apparently the Tigers are getting close to hitting a big deal that will bring Dontrell Willis and Miguel Cabrera to Detroit. We're paying a big price (Cameron Maybin and Andrew Miller are going to be great players) as far as prospects go, but the players we're getting out of this deal are young too, and they're already pretty damn good for their age (Cabrera especially is just UNGH level yes). I like my team this coming year, I like it a lot. Also, Dave Dombrowski is a hero.

[TheShroud13]

Revival attempt 56 of 75.

So, new semester is starting. I had two of my classes today, intro biology part 2 and Genetics. Later tonight I go to Physics, but that's besides the point. I think I'll enjoy these two classes. Both of the professors are quirky, but seem fair and interesting. The Biology professor looks exactly like George Lucas (if Lucas were thinner), but does a really good job of making the lectures depart enough from the reading to be interesting and to help secure the material even more. The Genetics professor is way Indian and has an accent that is occasionally difficult to decipher, but also seems fair, and is clear enough that I'll be able to get through it.

On the other hand though, the actual classroom that the Genetics takes place in is the bleakest room in existence. The ceiling is frighteningly high, the room is not adequately lit, and the colour scheme of the room is mostly grey, with hemp and olive accents for good measure. This room is going to sap my soul. I'll have to wear 3-D glasses to class to get through it.

In any case, I'm very excited for this new semester, even though it's going to be a lot of work! Hopefully I'll meet some fun new folks!

P.S. - Wacky trivia: I well beyond the point where it would actually hurt me to know this, but the lady I was mentioning earlier in this blog is now engaged. It's more fun for the irony than anything else.

[TheShroud13]

The Less Important Aspect of this Entry - Went to physics tonight. This class is going to bore my mind to death. This is the intro to physics, but the material is so basic it feels more like an introduction to introductions, which would honestly be a better course for me as I'm very bad at introducing myself to people. In any case, it's good to have at least one cupcake course this term.

From here on, the reading gets a bit rough, why not throw on some background music? This is the cumulation of several months of thought brought together by an discussion that I had about a week ago, so there's a lot here. I also just wanted to see how well I could write on a whim. Some poems are included that have been written while I've been having this train of thought. Hopefully the poems will help add a bit more abstract, emotional content to it all, and having the text will help make my nonsensical poetry work. I don't expect a lot of readership, but as this stuff has been on my mind for quite some time, I'd like to get it out so maaaybe someone will get to hear my story, and I feel like I'm going to lose a lot of self expression time once this semester really gets rolling (:

The More Important Aspect of this Entry - So last weekend, I went up to Houghton, Michigan (which is about a 10 hour drive from where I currently live) to help move a good friend of mine, John Bennett, into Michigan Tech, the university he now attends. Before I get into anything else, there is some fabulously beautiful scenery up there. When we would come back into Houghton from the neighboring city, where the Wal-Mart was, was an absolutely breathtaking. Lake Superior crouched, nestled into the left corner of my field of vision, the sky blanketed atop the lake, as well as a cliffside (at least as cliffy as you get in Michigan) coated entirely with trees. Through the trees faint lights of homes and the like would poke out, with a few mining structures poking out of the top of it all. I'd not seen anything like it, and struggle to describe it, but it was gorgeous. And that was only one of the beautiful things I saw while I was up there.

What really prompted me to write about this though, were some of the discussions I had with John's father, Mike, on the drive home. Beautiful as scenery is, no matter how new or fresh, it's the company that makes a trip truly worthwhile. After all, I'd rather be accompanied at a Burger King than be alone in Hawai'i.

Mike and I had not previously spoken all that often so there was a wealth of experience for the two of us to share, which was fortunate. 10 hours is longer than it sounds (in poor company). He covered a lot of information I would not have expected. He shared a frighteningly comprehensive knowledge about Michigan's geology, we both reflected on being recovering Catholics, and the similar ways in which we became skeptical of the religion, we talked about the amazingly stupid people and philosophies that fill the upper ranks of the American auto industry, and discussed all sort of religious and political corruption from the the Inquisition on. It was scintillating conversation.

As intriguing as all of that was, his reflections on his college experience were what really got my attention. Like me, he attended the University of Michigan, so I was interested just to find out what the old U was like back in the day. As I expected, his memories of Ann Arbor mimicked mine in many ways. Lots of beer, a decent amount of pot, and a class here or there when no recreation conflicted with it.

After the general state of the campus though, our stories diverged a great deal. My memories of college include a lot of time parked in front of my computer or Playstation and a handful of parties melted into one homogenous conglomerate memory that reminds me so much of the loosly quoted Ron Burgundy, "I've been going to the same party for 10 years, and in no way is that depressing," although I wholly disagree with his conclusion. I certainly remember the people I've met at U-M, and maintain close ties with some of them today, but the only outstanding memory I have of my college experience is of my performance at the Dear Friends concert. Granted, that was a phenomenal experience that I treasure, and I'll talk more about that later. The bulk of my college career though, was not all that noteworthy.

Now this is not to say my college experience was a total bust. For a guy that probably skipped at least one class every week (some classes I probably attended less than I actually skipped), I performed very well as far as grades went. I didn't start any fires, but those are results you need to work for. I also learned a lot about music, which was extremely exciting for me. I was complimented on my composing ability by a student of Leonard Bernstein. I think I must be pretty good if a generation removed from Bernstein, I'm, in Liquid's words, "Pretty good." I developed a sense of humour that I lacked in high school, and I learned to appreciate myself and the beauty of living on earth. These things - I can't point to any single moment in time that I can tell a story about and say - "That way a life changing experience for me", however. The change happened. And these lessons will definitely serve me the rest of my life.

Then there's Mike. This is a man slightly over two and three-quarter times my age who's college memories read as clearly and expansively as an encyclopedia. I on the other hand, am struggling to fill the WikiPedia entry for King Crimson's remarkable song "Discipline" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_(King_Crimson_song)).

The clarity and breadth of his memory is not the only impressive aspect of his memories that astounds me, although I wonder what sort of awe I could have felt had he not forgotten any stories. No, impressive as the man who's done everything is, the man who's done everything worth doing is even more remarkable, and considering I surely must have received the abridged version, I'm sure he is it.

With him, almost every conversation, no matter how innocent its beginnings, was a pathway to getting within reach of the stars. We were discussing the music of his time, music I'm often fond of. We found our way to the topic of Neil Young eventually, and I admitted that, despite my best efforts, I could never get into his music. Almost as if I hadn't spoke, Mike entered a recitative trance that would wet a preacher and said, as if he were putting on a pair of shoes, "well, I actually had a more personal reason to be interested in Neil Young. The first LSD I ever took I got from him."

And I'm floored. The first LSD. In his world the first hit of acid comes from the hand of an international star. In my world the last hit comes from your best friend's roommate, weeks before he finds himself expelled from college. In his world, the power of celebrity is so dilute that it's only spectacular on drugs. In my world, the world must be on drugs for the power of celebrity to be so spectacular. This is a man who found himself backstage at a Velvet Underground show, taking the picture of Andy Warhol. This is a man who was stoned at a B.B. King show while the badges threw Frisbees with men with hemp for hair at a show where B.B. King thanked the audience for digging his music, as they were the first predominantly white crowd he had played for, and then following it up with a performance that Mike described as one of the finest performances he had ever seen. One beyond any words.

I say this not as nostalgia for a better time gone by, because God knows the 60's had problems. And though he lived having taken a picture of Andy Warhol, he lived having given a ballot to Richard Nixon. I don't aim to plant Eden in the 60's, or claim Mike's genome as Adam's.

But I made the conclusion after graduating U-M that I had finally attained the maturity and social prowess that most students had going into high school. Some awakening that was. I know now, I'm not even embryonic. Hell, I'm so far behind in my development that the species that will give rise to my species hasn't even evolved yet. And here I am, taking Physics 101 at the age of 23. A quarter of my life (and I hope. my denominator's accurate) exhausted, like a tank of gas in an idling car, only running to pump the stereo with one song stuck on repeat. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyL2vAUVOM0)

In remarking on John's decision to do his schooling in the beautiful, yet tragically remote upper peninsula, Mike mentioned that to have the sort of experience with people as remarkable as he did was a big reason he went to an institution like the University of Michigan. And the University hasn't changed. Names still pass through Ann Arbor like spirits through Styx. And I was oblivious to almost all of it. Preferring instead the calamity of the practice room, learning to hone my craft and power as a singer, just so I could have the clarity in my mind of a single melody at once. Preferring instead the homestead, where I could play video games, get high once and a while, and melt into the backdrop of that super standard party with piss in my cup.

My one touch of the true Michigan experience, of Hunter S. Thompson's immortal wave (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ppwS5K8e9Y&feature=related) was my experience with Dear Friends. And without a doubt, it was special. Not only that, but I got to glory from the opposite side of the spectrum. Performing in that show, never. Even if I had managed to fulfill my farfetched dream of being the shortest man to ever get a standing ovation as Wotan on the Metropolitan Opera stage. Never, would the reception have been as electric as it was when I stepped on to be a meager choirster, one of many, on my performance of two songs on that stage. Never.

I got to feel, briefly, what it was like to be the deities that Mike had touched. Granted I was more a fragment of those deities, sort of like a Deva in Hinduism. Still, a handful of people came up to my friends and I. Us: the choir that sang two songs in a concert. Us: the people with absolutely no power of celebrity, who were completely unknown before they stepped onto that stage and said "Fithos". For one night, I did not have to watch the wave break, but rather broke it myself. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3YkmoZRF-Q) It wasn't B.B. King playing for his first predominantly white audience. But as the first big game music concert to reach beyond California, it was it's own kind of special.

Yet, I almost missed out on it. When the e-mail first showed up in my inbox, I didn't even believe it. Wait. Singing in a Final Fantasy concert? How could I possibly know someone that would have that connection? So, in a bout of my famous irrationality, I ignored the e-mail. This e-mail, from a person who was in the same voice studio as me, I ignored. Because I was too afraid I wouldn't be good enough, and didn't have the stones to have a friend tell me that I didn't make the cut. Fuck you Shroud! You knew exactly what songs they were going to be performing, even though it wasn't in the e-mail, and you didn't answer the e-mail that would have you performing your idol's music. Fuck you.

It wasn't until a friend of mine, remarking that he had recieved the e-mail and saying, "Aren't you kind of into Final Fantasy" and I answered quite empathetically yes, that I finally answered the e-mail. After he locked me in his room and refused to open the door until I had sent the e-mail. A good friend. If only he had been there to tell me, "Hey, that choirster who really doesn't like Uematsu's music that much just got his signature, maybe you should go get one too." Deified as I briefly was during that weekend, I still trembled at the idol's foot.

Still, missed opportunities aside, it was a phenomenal experience. Yet, whenever I recall back to that weekend, I recall first and foremost the absolute ass I made of myself after the show. It was my first real party aside from a couple frat shindigs my roommate dragged me to, so nobody told me that Captain Morgan's was not a drink to be taken by the glass. That night, I saw a hotel's pool security guard leave his post because he couldn't deal with a girl giving a guy a blow job in the pool, and aside from that it was pretty much me puking my guts out. So was the next morning. So why do I remember this more readily than the experience that was actually something.

Maybe, in time, I'll remember more of the elements of college that made it a time worth living, as opposed to remembering the embarassing times, and the lessons I learned as a whole, without any tie to experience. For now though, I still stand here, amidst my wondering as to why Biology designed the life cycle as it did, I wonder what four years of my life meant. Where I stand, the future is beautiful, and I am well envelop myself in its fair skin. And where I look back, the gaming has been great, the dining fine, and the mood bright. But I wonder whose hands I could have shaken were I not afraid to punch them, and whose lips I would have kissed were I not afraid to bite them, and mare than anything else, I wonder whose ears I would have shared this story were I not afraid they'd laugh.

With six more years of college and, if chance is on my side, many more years of life ahead of me, there's no more time for regrets. Every single one of these years is precious, and will not be met on my tip toes. For anyone who had the spirit to read this, you're a better reader than I am. But if you ever see me putting my dreams back in the holster, take me to the sea, and set me where Hunter's wave breaks. And if I tremble, let me drown.

Fin

i could swipe a star and put it in a street lamp
but i couldn't light the candle
on our table. i took the oil and drove away.
my tongue's tossed innocent men to the
electric chair, but it wouldn't-kiss you.
snake,oil('d!) an' i drove away.

morning takes an hour from the moon
headlights cleave through twilight dreams when
a love was surely soon: with my
toes tense on a timber beam
above a forest scene
i smell exhaust and stare at void

i could swipe a star and put it in a street lamp
but i couldn't light the candle
on our table. i took the oil and drove away.

water takes the hour of dawn
and this dreamer's sap feeds the drain
and all was coming clean. and then
working 'midst a steel tyranny
robots drone productively and it
starts to pulse the heart

my tongue's tossed innocent men to the
electric chair, but it wouldn't-kiss you.
snake,oil('d!) an' i drove away.

if i built rome, could i save the sun
and would i take your hand and swing you
to the sea or
would i bleed the norsemen while
the sun revolved around us
before i left you to clear my name?

i could swipe a star and put it in a street lamp
but i couldn't light the candle
on our table. i took the oil and drove away.
my tongue's tossed innocent men to the
electric chair, but it wouldn't-kiss you.
snake,oil('d!) an' i drove away.

[Marid]

The Less Important Aspect of this Entry - Went to physics tonight. This class is going to bore my mind to death. This is the intro to physics, but the material is so basic it feels more like an introduction to introductions, which would honestly be a better course for me as I'm very bad at introducing myself to people. In any case, it's good to have at least one cupcake course this term.

From here on, the reading gets a bit rough, why not throw on some background music? This is the cumulation of several months of thought brought together by an discussion that I had about a week ago, so there's a lot here. I also just wanted to see how well I could write on a whim. Some poems are included that have been written while I've been having this train of thought. Hopefully the poems will help add a bit more abstract, emotional content to it all, and having the text will help make my nonsensical poetry work. I don't expect a lot of readership, but as this stuff has been on my mind for quite some time, I'd like to get it out so maaaybe someone will get to hear my story, and I feel like I'm going to lose a lot of self expression time once this semester really gets rolling (:

The More Important Aspect of this Entry - So last weekend, I went up to Houghton, Michigan (which is about a 10 hour drive from where I currently live) to help move a good friend of mine, John Bennett, into Michigan Tech, the university he now attends. Before I get into anything else, there is some fabulously beautiful scenery up there. When we would come back into Houghton from the neighboring city, where the Wal-Mart was, was an absolutely breathtaking. Lake Superior crouched, nestled into the left corner of my field of vision, the sky blanketed atop the lake, as well as a cliffside (at least as cliffy as you get in Michigan) coated entirely with trees. Through the trees faint lights of homes and the like would poke out, with a few mining structures poking out of the top of it all. I'd not seen anything like it, and struggle to describe it, but it was gorgeous. And that was only one of the beautiful things I saw while I was up there.

What really prompted me to write about this though, were some of the discussions I had with John's father, Mike, on the drive home. Beautiful as scenery is, no matter how new or fresh, it's the company that makes a trip truly worthwhile. After all, I'd rather be accompanied at a Burger King than be alone in Hawai'i.

Mike and I had not previously spoken all that often so there was a wealth of experience for the two of us to share, which was fortunate. 10 hours is longer than it sounds (in poor company). He covered a lot of information I would not have expected. He shared a frighteningly comprehensive knowledge about Michigan's geology, we both reflected on being recovering Catholics, and the similar ways in which we became skeptical of the religion, we talked about the amazingly stupid people and philosophies that fill the upper ranks of the American auto industry, and discussed all sort of religious and political corruption from the the Inquisition on. It was scintillating conversation.

As intriguing as all of that was, his reflections on his college experience were what really got my attention. Like me, he attended the University of Michigan, so I was interested just to find out what the old U was like back in the day. As I expected, his memories of Ann Arbor mimicked mine in many ways. Lots of beer, a decent amount of pot, and a class here or there when no recreation conflicted with it.

After the general state of the campus though, our stories diverged a great deal. My memories of college include a lot of time parked in front of my computer or Playstation and a handful of parties melted into one homogenous conglomerate memory that reminds me so much of the loosly quoted Ron Burgundy, "I've been going to the same party for 10 years, and in no way is that depressing," although I wholly disagree with his conclusion. I certainly remember the people I've met at U-M, and maintain close ties with some of them today, but the only outstanding memory I have of my college experience is of my performance at the Dear Friends concert. Granted, that was a phenomenal experience that I treasure, and I'll talk more about that later. The bulk of my college career though, was not all that noteworthy.

Now this is not to say my college experience was a total bust. For a guy that probably skipped at least one class every week (some classes I probably attended less than I actually skipped), I performed very well as far as grades went. I didn't start any fires, but those are results you need to work for. I also learned a lot about music, which was extremely exciting for me. I was complimented on my composing ability by a student of Leonard Bernstein. I think I must be pretty good if a generation removed from Bernstein, I'm, in Liquid's words, "Pretty good." I developed a sense of humour that I lacked in high school, and I learned to appreciate myself and the beauty of living on earth. These things - I can't point to any single moment in time that I can tell a story about and say - "That way a life changing experience for me", however. The change happened. And these lessons will definitely serve me the rest of my life.

Then there's Mike. This is a man slightly over two and three-quarter times my age who's college memories read as clearly and expansively as an encyclopedia. I on the other hand, am struggling to fill the WikiPedia entry for King Crimson's remarkable song "Discipline" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_(King_Crimson_song)).

The clarity and breadth of his memory is not the only impressive aspect of his memories that astounds me, although I wonder what sort of awe I could have felt had he not forgotten any stories. No, impressive as the man who's done everything is, the man who's done everything worth doing is even more remarkable, and considering I surely must have received the abridged version, I'm sure he is it.

With him, almost every conversation, no matter how innocent its beginnings, was a pathway to getting within reach of the stars. We were discussing the music of his time, music I'm often fond of. We found our way to the topic of Neil Young eventually, and I admitted that, despite my best efforts, I could never get into his music. Almost as if I hadn't spoke, Mike entered a recitative trance that would wet a preacher and said, as if he were putting on a pair of shoes, "well, I actually had a more personal reason to be interested in Neil Young. The first LSD I ever took I got from him."

And I'm floored. The first LSD. In his world the first hit of acid comes from the hand of an international star. In my world the last hit comes from your best friend's roommate, weeks before he finds himself expelled from college. In his world, the power of celebrity is so dilute that it's only spectacular on drugs. In my world, the world must be on drugs for the power of celebrity to be so spectacular. This is a man who found himself backstage at a Velvet Underground show, taking the picture of Andy Warhol. This is a man who was stoned at a B.B. King show while the badges threw Frisbees with men with hemp for hair at a show where B.B. King thanked the audience for digging his music, as they were the first predominantly white crowd he had played for, and then following it up with a performance that Mike described as one of the finest performances he had ever seen. One beyond any words.

I say this not as nostalgia for a better time gone by, because God knows the 60's had problems. And though he lived having taken a picture of Andy Warhol, he lived having given a ballot to Richard Nixon. I don't aim to plant Eden in the 60's, or claim Mike's genome as Adam's.

But I made the conclusion after graduating U-M that I had finally attained the maturity and social prowess that most students had going into high school. Some awakening that was. I know now, I'm not even embryonic. Hell, I'm so far behind in my development that the species that will give rise to my species hasn't even evolved yet. And here I am, taking Physics 101 at the age of 23. A quarter of my life (and I hope. my denominator's accurate) exhausted, like a tank of gas in an idling car, only running to pump the stereo with one song stuck on repeat. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyL2vAUVOM0)

In remarking on John's decision to do his schooling in the beautiful, yet tragically remote upper peninsula, Mike mentioned that to have the sort of experience with people as remarkable as he did was a big reason he went to an institution like the University of Michigan. And the University hasn't changed. Names still pass through Ann Arbor like spirits through Styx. And I was oblivious to almost all of it. Preferring instead the calamity of the practice room, learning to hone my craft and power as a singer, just so I could have the clarity in my mind of a single melody at once. Preferring instead the homestead, where I could play video games, get high once and a while, and melt into the backdrop of that super standard party with piss in my cup.

My one touch of the true Michigan experience, of Hunter S. Thompson's immortal wave (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ppwS5K8e9Y&feature=related) was my experience with Dear Friends. And without a doubt, it was special. Not only that, but I got to glory from the opposite side of the spectrum. Performing in that show, never. Even if I had managed to fulfill my farfetched dream of being the shortest man to ever get a standing ovation as Wotan on the Metropolitan Opera stage. Never, would the reception have been as electric as it was when I stepped on to be a meager choirster, one of many, on my performance of two songs on that stage. Never.

I got to feel, briefly, what it was like to be the deities that Mike had touched. Granted I was more a fragment of those deities, sort of like a Deva in Hinduism. Still, a handful of people came up to my friends and I. Us: the choir that sang two songs in a concert. Us: the people with absolutely no power of celebrity, who were completely unknown before they stepped onto that stage and said "Fithos". For one night, I did not have to watch the wave break, but rather broke it myself. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3YkmoZRF-Q) It wasn't B.B. King playing for his first predominantly white audience. But as the first big game music concert to reach beyond California, it was it's own kind of special.

Yet, I almost missed out on it. When the e-mail first showed up in my inbox, I didn't even believe it. Wait. Singing in a Final Fantasy concert? How could I possibly know someone that would have that connection? So, in a bout of my famous irrationality, I ignored the e-mail. This e-mail, from a person who was in the same voice studio as me, I ignored. Because I was too afraid I wouldn't be good enough, and didn't have the stones to have a friend tell me that I didn't make the cut. Fuck you Shroud! You knew exactly what songs they were going to be performing, even though it wasn't in the e-mail, and you didn't answer the e-mail that would have you performing your idol's music. Fuck you.

It wasn't until a friend of mine, remarking that he had recieved the e-mail and saying, "Aren't you kind of into Final Fantasy" and I answered quite empathetically yes, that I finally answered the e-mail. After he locked me in his room and refused to open the door until I had sent the e-mail. A good friend. If only he had been there to tell me, "Hey, that choirster who really doesn't like Uematsu's music that much just got his signature, maybe you should go get one too." Deified as I briefly was during that weekend, I still trembled at the idol's foot.

Still, missed opportunities aside, it was a phenomenal experience. Yet, whenever I recall back to that weekend, I recall first and foremost the absolute ass I made of myself after the show. It was my first real party aside from a couple frat shindigs my roommate dragged me to, so nobody told me that Captain Morgan's was not a drink to be taken by the glass. That night, I saw a hotel's pool security guard leave his post because he couldn't deal with a girl giving a guy a blow job in the pool, and aside from that it was pretty much me puking my guts out. So was the next morning. So why do I remember this more readily than the experience that was actually something.

Maybe, in time, I'll remember more of the elements of college that made it a time worth living, as opposed to remembering the embarassing times, and the lessons I learned as a whole, without any tie to experience. For now though, I still stand here, amidst my wondering as to why Biology designed the life cycle as it did, I wonder what four years of my life meant. Where I stand, the future is beautiful, and I am well envelop myself in its fair skin. And where I look back, the gaming has been great, the dining fine, and the mood bright. But I wonder whose hands I could have shaken were I not afraid to punch them, and whose lips I would have kissed were I not afraid to bite them, and mare than anything else, I wonder whose ears I would have shared this story were I not afraid they'd laugh.

With six more years of college and, if chance is on my side, many more years of life ahead of me, there's no more time for regrets. Every single one of these years is precious, and will not be met on my tip toes. For anyone who had the spirit to read this, you're a better reader than I am. But if you ever see me putting my dreams back in the holster, take me to the sea, and set me where Hunter's wave breaks. And if I tremble, let me drown.

Fin

i could swipe a star and put it in a street lamp
but i couldn't light the candle
on our table. i took the oil and drove away.
my tongue's tossed innocent men to the
electric chair, but it wouldn't-kiss you.
snake,oil('d!) an' i drove away.

morning takes an hour from the moon
headlights cleave through twilight dreams when
a love was surely soon: with my
toes tense on a timber beam
above a forest scene
i smell exhaust and stare at void

i could swipe a star and put it in a street lamp
but i couldn't light the candle
on our table. i took the oil and drove away.

water takes the hour of dawn
and this dreamer's sap feeds the drain
and all was coming clean. and then
working 'midst a steel tyranny
robots drone productively and it
starts to pulse the heart

my tongue's tossed innocent men to the
electric chair, but it wouldn't-kiss you.
snake,oil('d!) an' i drove away.

if i built rome, could i save the sun
and would i take your hand and swing you
to the sea or
would i bleed the norsemen while
the sun revolved around us
before i left you to clear my name?

i could swipe a star and put it in a street lamp
but i couldn't light the candle
on our table. i took the oil and drove away.
my tongue's tossed innocent men to the
electric chair, but it wouldn't-kiss you.
snake,oil('d!) an' i drove away.

Wow, this was a really beautiful entry. Even though you say you've only reached the maturity of high school, I don't think that's true at all. A lot of the thoughts you've expanded upon in this entry are much more mature than that.

I don't think there are many people in existence who don't have some regret about not living life to the fullest as much as they could. I have my own regrets about college (mainly living in a major depressive episode for a year and not doing more about it), but when I feel sad about it, I try to remember these words:

There's only us, there's only this
Forget regret or life is yours to miss
No other road, no other way
No day but today

So just remember, you still have many years left ahead of you. :) And interestingly, the Dear Friends concert was one of my best memories from college, too. I saw the very first concert in Los Angeles with my friends from UCSD, and I will never forget it.

[TheShroud13]

A friend of mine took some pictures from up north, and I've included a picture from the town I visited the other day just so you can get a sense of what it actually looks like, instead of what I think it looks like. Though this is taken from the perspective of what I was looking at in my description, and is not exactly the same. The elevation of what I was looking at was much higher. Still, I think it's a lovely photo.

Lovely misty morning earlier today. The sun peeking through what looked like a veil was quite a sight. Unfortunately, it quickly developed into actual clouds, and the day got quite rainy. Still a lovely sight. I've now been to all of my courses for this term, and I'm really only disappointed with the Physics class. Should be a good term (=

Wow, this was a really beautiful entry. Even though you say you've only reached the maturity of high school, I don't think that's true at all. A lot of the thoughts you've expanded upon in this entry are much more mature than that.

I mean more in terms of social adaptability rather than anything else. I feel about as comfortable around people now as I estimate most other folks did in about high school. Granted, I still have some wacky social hang-ups that I don't think anyone normal ever had, but that's just one of those things in life I'll have to learn to deal with (:

(mainly living in a major depressive episode for a year and not doing more about it)

I know the feeling. I don't personally believe I had any episodes during university, but during high school I certainly did, and developed really terrible social and study habits because I had so little motivation to do anything in high school, so I ended up in college as fearful of people as ever, and not really knowing how to approach work. So for my Freshman year, even though I probably wasn't actually depressed, I was living the life of a depressed person. My shitty ass Freshman roommate didn't help matters much either, but, I shouldn't be playing the blame game.

Thanks so much for the encouragement, and I'm glad you enjoyed my ramblings (:

[Marid]

A friend of mine took some pictures from up north, and I've included a picture from the town I visited the other day just so you can get a sense of what it actually looks like, instead of what I think it looks like. Though this is taken from the perspective of what I was looking at in my description, and is not exactly the same. The elevation of what I was looking at was much higher. Still, I think it's a lovely photo.

Lovely misty morning earlier today. The sun peeking through what looked like a veil was quite a sight. Unfortunately, it quickly developed into actual clouds, and the day got quite rainy. Still a lovely sight. I've now been to all of my courses for this term, and I'm really only disappointed with the Physics class. Should be a good term (=

Man, for the longest time, I didn't even believe people *lived* on the upper peninsula. Seeing a picture of it is amazing! :D

[TheShroud13]

Well. People is stretching it ;)

EDIT: Okay, so it's totally immoral, but I'm playing Spore right now and having a really fun time with it. More to come as I play more of the game.

[TheShroud13]

So signs are good that the gaps in my social life, left by my brother returning to U-M and my other two closest friends going much further away, might be filled well enough this semester. I had my worries, considering I spent the bulk of my non-travelling summer with my brother and have never been terribly swift about making new acquaintances. However, the one remaining solid contact I have in the area is doing a decent job of assimilating me into his circle of friends. My humour seems like a good fit with them, so my weekends probably won't be busts after all ;)

Things get interesting after these people graduate as well, but in the meantime, it looks like I don't have to stress too much about the socializing. And I still need to find folks that like dancing :ashamed:

[Marid]

So signs are good that the gaps in my social life, left by my brother returning to U-M and my other two closest friends going much further away, might be filled well enough this semester. I had my worries, considering I spent the bulk of my non-travelling summer with my brother and have never been terribly swift about making new acquaintances. However, the one remaining solid contact I have in the area is doing a decent job of assimilating me into his circle of friends. My humour seems like a good fit with them, so my weekends probably won't be busts after all ;)

Things get interesting after these people graduate as well, but in the meantime, it looks like I don't have to stress too much about the socializing. And I still need to find folks that like dancing :ashamed:

I'm really friendly but also selective about the people who get close to me, so I sometimes have similar fears. :) I've had the same best friend for 13+ years and I really feel afraid to move away from home in a way, because I worry about not being close to the her (and the other people I know).

[TheShroud13]

I'm really friendly but also selective about the people who get close to me, so I sometimes have similar fears. :) I've had the same best friend for 13+ years and I really feel afraid to move away from home in a way, because I worry about not being close to the her (and the other people I know).

My criteria are actually pretty simple: laugh at my jokes, you get in. Also, never steal the spotlight from me at parties (: As a result, I don't have much trouble getting along with people, provided I actually meet them. I'm definitely not swift at getting close to people, but I'm not too worried about not having super close friends nearby, so long as I have folks to hang out with and something classes that will let me think.

I just wanted to make sure that I didn't end up repeating what happened my freshman year of U-M, where I didn't really make any friends that I could hang out with regularly until my Sophomore year, so I spent almost every weekend back home. Which wasn't terrible, but if it happened this year, I'd have 6-10 hour drives to meet folks, and that just wouldn't work :) Knowing that this probably will not be happening is a great sense of relief. And maybe I'll even get to know some folks who'll be sticking around for another year!

In other news, today was a great day. I found a torrent containing six or so books on music theory and composition. These should keep me busy for a while!

[Rain]

In other news, today was a great day. I found a torrent containing six or so books on music theory and composition. These should keep me busy for a while!

My day would be great too with THAT! What was the name of the torrent. :o

[Steve Mcblark]

My day would be great too with THAT! What was the name of the torrent. :o

Yes, what indeed!?

[TheShroud13]

My day would be great too with THAT! What was the name of the torrent. :o

All this emotional stuff here, and all you care about is the free books :tpg: Imma write a song about this man. And I'm gonna sing it to my divorce lawyer x_X

In all seriousness, the torrent kinda blew, so I threw it up on Sendspace for ya. I strongly recommend the Berlioz. Some of the stuff is out of date (I wish I had the updated version that my namesake Strauss edited, but alas, no such luck) but it's still a very fine venture into the world of instrumentation. Plus, it's entertaining to hear someone so old talking about the composers he idolized (i.e. Gluck!? I mean, his music's awesome, but I never pegged him for a genius of orchestration). His thoughts on the guitar also mimic mine exactly.

His comments about keys and strings on page 28 of the pdf are also interesting.

Keep in mind, these are pretty academic textbooks. But that's the way Shroud likes it, so you'll have to search on your own for more user friendly texts =D

Beware of academia! (http://www.sendspace.com/file/76s7b0)

Also blog moment: It's really frickin' strange that, having started what is arguably the heftiest courseload I've ever taken, I've probably spent more time at SEMO since this semester started than I have in the past. Ages.

Also, to accompany my monster post a couple posts ago, I wanted to share a couple King Crimson songs. Yes, the lyrics are mega cliché, but they're relevant, and both songs are absolutely gorgeous. This is the kind of music I want to be writing . . . along with all of their other stuff x_X

Eyes Wide Open (http://www.sendspace.com/file/ky88z7)
One Time (http://www.sendspace.com/file/c7dej5)

[TheShroud13]

Running Life Record Segment:Went over to my buddy's place last night. Had a lot of different fun. Drank delicious Unibroue La Fin du Monde (fantastic beer. Has a sharp, zippy flavour, but with a light texture, and 9% alcohol by volume), reunited with a friend that I'd not seen almost at all through college, and played whatever NES games we could get to work on my friend's console. Among them was CastleVania. My friend and I collectively got up to the very end of Level 4 until exhaustion took control of us and the combination of Igor and it being 2 AM forced us to retire.

I was very pleased with myself, having never advanced beyond the second level of CastleVania previously. However, being pwned by Igor didn't satisfy me the least bit. I promptly returned home, redownloaded the rom, plugged my Sixaxis into my PC, and started playing. In due time it was 6:30 AM and I had only progressed one additional level, where I got my ass handed to me (on alternating lives) by death, or the heinous tunnel of rape that leads up to him. I will have conquered this game by the end of the week. Mark my words. Also, I may aim to conquer this sleeping issue, but that's yet to be determined.

Skipped Class Counter: 1

Blog Segment: Okay, I don't really want to jump to conclusions. I'm only four days into the semester proper. But combining my initial impressions of this term with my experience from the summer semester, I'm positive that I not only made the right choice in abandoning the music business, but the confidence and optimism I started seeing in myself over the last couple years I spent at U-M (almost none of which is expressed here) are both being verified by my current experience, and those traits figure to be prominently involved in my disposition from here forward!

I will admit, a large part of the reason I'm having such a good time is because of the growth I made at U-M. The confidence I developed has helped me not to freak out about embarking on a totally new academic experience, and given me hope the social aspects of life which keep my spirits high. The way I learned to appreciate all experiences has helped me to enjoy, rather than lament, the time I get to spend purely with myself. Plus, the general brightening of my mood has helped to allow me to treat every novelty with the sense of wonder that it deserves.

However, I definitely think the new atmosphere and subject matter is helping me a great deal. I no longer have to deal with thinking, "Oh man, how am I going to memorize that song," or with the anxiety of an upcoming performance (or the inevitable ego crushing after you thought you gave a stellar performance, and found yourself outclassed twice on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feBvypX0E9k http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc0mYsy6OGc&feature=related). A little sore throat is now just a minor annoyance, not a recipe for lessened practice time, and certain embarrassment in the future. Oh yeah, also not as much worrying about that elusive career thing.

Apart from being much more relaxed, I'm also actually really enjoying the material I'm studying when I was really only expecting to tolerate it, and enjoy it's satisfaction of my insatiable curiosity. Instead, Biology, which I abhorred in high school, is actually proving to be remarkably interesting to me. Physics is the one lame duck, but, I'll deal (: Also Genetics, I was always interested in Genetics, so that's no surprise for me, but I'm amazed by the fact that no matter how many courses I take that deal with Mendel's basic experiments (I'm probably up to 5,000 by now) I'm amazed by them every time.

That's one of the big things that's changed for me and my learning process from high school. Before, I was like, get me the info for my exam and get out my face. Now, I read all these descriptions of these really clever scientific and it just fills me with this wonderful inquisitive sense of wonder. Reading about the experiments almost puts me in the position of complete ignorance, and seeing where people come up with remarkably accurate conjectures (and the similarly clever experiments that test/lead to them) that I are so beyond my own imagination. It's really astounding to me.

I've also found myself far more musically inspired lately. Being exposed to all of these wonders of the world; there's no better muse. I mean, I've learned many of these things before, but only now do I have the mindset that lets me appreciate how beautifully interconnected all things are, and how seemingly minute actions can produce stellar results and see them and be impressed by them, rather than my adolescent "yeah, i've seen that shit man. i can do that" apathy.

In any case, seeing all these things are helping my musical mind open up a bit more, and are enabling me to see more musical ideas than I had before. My output is still verrrrry slow, but more ideas are spontaneously placing themselves in my head, which is a fantastic bonus. I really did feel like, at the end of my time at U-M, that I was exhausting my mind's tolerance for 'music for music's sake', and having my mind exposed to ideas that actually mean something, that I can draw to music, I think is going to help me both write, and listen better.

So yeah, I'm very excited about my life and the world right now. I wish I had more time and money to blow so I could spend some of these couple years doing a wee bit more musical study, along with some philosophy and economic, and maybe some english. But I'm definitely satisfied with my path with the sciences right now :) Bleh. This wasn't nearly as descriptive as I was hoping it would be, but maybe I'll find better words for my thoughts as the semester continues.

Blog Segment Part 2: Uh oh. My agent has informed me that, while he likes this blog segment, my 'street cred' is based on the fact that I'm a crotchety old man. So to make up for that life affirming nonsense, I'm have to bitch about something. And what better than arbitrary bullshit that doesn't really matter? And what better than TRANSPORTATION!

So, my house is located in the center of a clusterfuck of no fewer than three subdivisions (and likely no more) who all decided they wanted to get all Mormon on each other and start a nice little web of hell in my backyard. In order to get a sense of what my neighborhood looks (and feels) like, imagine some sexy, heritable chromosomes; all packed, organized and ready to travel. Now imagine them unravelling into all that messy chromatin. Yeah. I have to live in that. This has provided me trouble in the past since the way to my house from main roads involves no fewer than three turns (which is apparently to many turns for the company I keep to memorize), and missing any of these turns is cause for certain doom, none of the company I keep has been able to memorize this path, and thus, they never visit me.

My tragic high school experience aside, each of the subdivisions has bent me over again. All of the subdivisions have managed to schedule all of their construction projects for the community roads at the exact. same. time. There is only one route out of my subdivision that does not lead me past the lovely orange construction barrels, and unless I'm headed for the neighborhood elementary school, this route takes me about a mile away from my actual direction.

Sign from god that I ought to be a pedophile? Coordinated conspiracy to drive me bananas? Or absurd coincidence based on inept community leaders? Tough call, but the construction is obnoxious regardless. Particularly when, for each of the past couple days, the route (a different one each time) I selected has been completely blocked off by workers * shakes fist * Granted, this isn't even the worst I have for transportation.

Let's talk about university parking mmm-kay? So I'm currently attending Oakland University. It's an institution that is located 15 minutes or so away from the place that I've lived all of the worst years of my life, and where I'll probably spend the first two years of the best ones. In any case, Oakland has a reputation of being a commuter school. This is great for me, because dorms are horrible, I don't generally like living with other college age students in an apartment (Shroudy needs his sleep). So despite the occasional awkwardness of living at home with mom & dad, it's really the best situation. Plus, driving to class every day not only saves me time, but ensures that the Michigan winter has less opportunity to shave years off of my reproductive viability.

Problem. The parking at OU sucks harder than your mom. Normally, I wouldn't really care about crappy parking, but this is a school that should be expecting people to park here! Let's go through a little question and answer session to see if you can get to class on time after leaving your home at a reasonable hour.

1. You've just arrived on campus. Where should you first look for parking?

Okay, so that's the only question. In any case if you answered: in the microscopically tiny building specific parking lots, in the main campus parking lot, on the roads that peer into the parking lots, or anywhere that it is legal to drive a car... You are wrong. You will find a parking space in 10-20 minutes. Good luck explaining yourself to your professor.

The actual correct answer is that you should drive to any lecture hall on campus, or to the cafeteria (depending on the time of day, and the moment of your arrival during the class cycle). Ideally, you will drive directly into the building, as to make your purpose clear. Then, you will find someone who is moving to the parking lot, and subtly stalk them throughout the pedestrian walking zones until they reach their car. Upon realizing they've gone to their car to apply make up, promptly run them over leave and arrange for your car to tumble harmlessly into a tree. Take the keys from the person you ran over, and voila. You've successfully parked at Oakland University in only 15 minutes (potentially 5 minutes better or worse than trying to park yourself, but seriously, how lenient do you think these professors are). Please enjoy your courses and the impending lawsuit. Irrelevant enough?

[Don]

Sixaxis? PC? TOGETHER? DO EXPLAIN!

I'll comment on your blog comment 1/2 later. That distracted me entirely...

[TheShroud13]

Sixaxis? PC? TOGETHER? DO EXPLAIN!

I'll comment on your blog comment 1/2 later. That distracted me entirely...

I'll get back to you on that when I'm posting from home. Let me warn you though, it's slightly buggy (mostly just in the set-up process, I've encountered no problems with actually using the controller) and there's no wireless/motion detection. So you're basically just getting a really nice USB controller that you don't have to pay extra for.

You ever think that student organizations are more like cults than anything? There's a faction at my university (and likely others) known as Students in Free Enterprise. Granted, I sympathize with a lot of their beliefs, but when you start getting a collection of people whose political views on Facebook which are: "Let the market decide", "The market will decide...", and the like, I start feeling the groupthink vibe. It's kind of irritating, because it means I can't join a group in order to find likeminded individuals and possibly make friends. Instead, all I can find is a likeminded conglomerate with which disagreement is impossible, and discussion is almost certainly of the format "You ever think X? Oh yeah, X is awesome! Let's have missionary style sex!" * yawns *

[TheShroud13]

So, I finally beat Castlevania for the first time in my life. I feel like I've finally hit puberty. Still, as if being unable to beat Death the manly way wasn't enough to bruise my confidence, they throw in the extra quest after the credits to make me feel even less heroic. Thanks Konami, I'm going to kill you. I'll have to come back to this when I have more time on my hands.

Also, if I go to any party this Halloween and they're not playing "Wicked Child", I'm leaving.

For Don. http://www.sendspace.com/file/hffbz0

1. Download and install the filter driver in libusb-win32 (libusb-win32-filter-bin-x.x.x.x.exe).
2. Plug the SIXAXIS into your PC.
3. Run ps3sixaxis_en.exe once.
4. Push the PS button on the SIXAXIS once if it seems to be sleeping.

Granted, this sometimes doesn't work. I occasionally end up turning my PS3 on accident, and all sort of such things. You also have to run the exe every time you restart your computer, which is a bit annoying. Still, I have a Sixaxis, and didn't want to buy a controller. Pretty easy decision for me (:

[TheShroud13]

So, for all the downsides to single life, it definitely has its advantages. And there are some times when I see just how thankful I should be to have traveled the path I have, and today is one of those days.

I was talking to a friend of mine, who, for the greater portion of the time I've known her, has been involved in semi-long term relationships (usually in the realm of 6 months to a year). Problem being, she does not really have a very clear sense of self. As a result, every time she gets into a relationship, she changes everything in her life to A - be geographically closer to the man she's with, and B - adapt the hobbies of the man she's with so they can spend more time together.

In moderation, I don't see that practice as all that dangerous. If it's realistic, why not put yourself in a situation where you can be close to the people you care about? But she takes it way too far. Despite being in a tenuous financial situation, she has leaped from university to university in order to be close to her romantic interests, and recently applied to another, which she likely would have attended if she had been better qualified. Not only that, but she has mirrored the studies of her romantic interests as well, meaning she's changed her major at least five times by now, often in very disparate fields.

Just recently, she's joined the Students in Free Enterprise group I mentioned earlier, which comes as a complete shock as she'd never expressed any interest in any thing related to economics before this term. It's not that I oppose change, I've certainly changed over the years. I just see her hopping haphazardly from life direction to life direction, and really wonder where it is she will end up ten years from now. She's nowhere close to completing any degree, doesn't seem to have any concrete extra-academic goals, and I really worry sometimes.

Of course, how much her relationships have shaped her vs. how much her base emotional stability has affected her relationships and her behaviour in them is another question entirely. I still think she might have come up with a clearer sense of what she wanted to be had she not spent all of her time in romance. In the wake of some of her past relationships, I always told her that I would recommend that she spend a little bit of time recovering from the break up and maybe even spending a little extra time really re-centering herself and finding out who she was and what she wanted out of life. But, to no avail, and ultimately it's not my decision, so whatever. My sources also tell me that I was a bad source, as she was apparently interested in me, and me praising the single life wasn't legitimate advice because it only sent her the message that I wasn't interested in her, and that hurt her feelings. -_-

In any case, I'm very glad that I've spent a lot of my time single. I was quite emotionally/goalally(new word rox) unstable myself in college, and while I can't imagine myself hopping on a train of majors and universities, I definitely think my insecurities would have lead me to make a lot of decisions more based on impressing whoever I was with at the time than with my long term well being in mind. I'm very grateful to have had the opportunity to meditate as thoroughly on my future, on my personal values, and all that jazz that has put me in a position to feel as good about where I am in life right now as I do.

[TheShroud13]

I spent most of today trying to foster a relationship between Sibelius and Cubase. The reason being is that Sibelius does not allow you to send MIDI messages to effects programs, which means that I cannot automate my guitar amp simulators. This causes massive trouble when I decide, "Hey, maybe the lead guitar should be clean for a while!" and is even more problematic when I want to use 3+ amp & effect patches for a single guitar line.

The problem I had in doing this was that for whatever reason, Cubase was taking in the input from one MIDI channel, and sending it to every output channel. So I throw a diminished chord in the rhythm guitar part, and all of a sudden I have every manual of the organ playing that chord, I have my synth lead trying to play that chord, I have my lead guitar playing that chord, I have my drum set trying to play that chord, I have the bass guitar playing that chord, and I have the poor Mellotron playing that chord. I look through every setting for both programs. I scour the instruction manuals and help files for each program. I can't find a damn explanation for what was going wrong.

It turns out that the little channel option in Cubase does not actually decide which channels of the MIDI input are used by that channel, but only determine which MIDI channel the track outputs on. In order to get a MIDI track to accept only one channel of incoming MIDI, you have to program a mini-macro telling the track to filter out all messages not coming from the channel you mean for it to communicate with. I don't personally have any problem with this procedure, I just don't know why the functionality would be so obscured, and not even mentioned for this particular purpose in the manual. It seems like only wanting a MIDI channel to receive 1 channel of data would be common enough to be included in the HUD, but apparently not!

Also, my university got shellacked by Notre Dame in football today. There is no Division I-A school I hate more than them. This gonna be a long year.

[TheShroud13]

Man. I had mad tension all day today. I don't know why either! Nothing bad really happened. . . It probably had something to do with not being able to fall asleep last night and waking up early, and not eating. But yeah. A little on the down side of things today, but a good nights sleep should perk me right back up ;)

[TheShroud13]

I broke 40 gold stars on Rock Band expert drums today 8) Of course, the going gets a lot tougher from here on out, but I'm going to master this game :D

[TheShroud13]

Things I did this week:

1. Broke 10*10^6 points in Rock Band. This makes me the 365th best player with access to EA's leaderboards. Still plenty of room for improvement.

2. Spent almost all of the weekend (and continue to today) tinkering with Guitar Rig and my synths in Cubase, trying to set up some decent presets so I don't have to spend all of my time fiddling with sounds when I start to write new pieces, and can instead just tweak stuff settled in. I'm not so good at it though ;)

Aside from that, it's been a pretty dull week. Virtually no socializing save Tuesday, when I went out for wings with one of my good friends (who will be leaving town at some point to pursue his career). I really need to learn to actually call people when I feel like hanging out instead of always waiting for people to call me (I seriously have done this once in the last four years), and after a certain point, much as I love this box, life in front of a computer screen gets pretty lonely. I also need to start talking to some folks in my classes and find some folks that I can hold a conversation with, it's also pretty tough to socialize when your pool of available folks is in the realm of 2.

[TheShroud13]

I meant to post this a couple days ago but I got sidetracked by . . . well, really nothing at all. But nothing has a way of distracting me.

So my GSI for my Bio lab is basically the biggest nerd on the planet. Considering this is coming from me, this is a pretty serious accusation. In our second class period, definite Dungeons & Dragons T-shirt sighting. In the third, an all black outfit complete with 80's style headband & hairdo, black fingernails, and a necklace sporting the eye of Ra. To go along with that, she had her laptop around so she could give a powerpoint presentation. Her desktop? A collage featuring two shots from FFX, one of Chris Chelios kissing the Stanley Cup, one of Cloud from Advent Children, and one of the asian dude from Heroes. Her screen saver? Definite Sephiroth presence. I'm not really going for anything with this, I just find it entertaining. Plus, I feel like I probably need to behave in class lest she cast magic missile on me, so I want you guys to be ready with reverse transmogrification potions in case I end up as a wasp sometime this semester.

Had a pretty good week. Got 90% on a genetics exam where the class average was 65%, I was pretty pleased about that (although I should still do better) and continued to dominate my chemistry and physics courses. I kinda got schooled by my first bio exam (80% yikes, I was expecting a 90%ish) but fortunately that score's decent enough that I can turn shit around. Aside from that, hung out with a buddy of mine on Monday and beat Contra using only three or four Konami Code continues -_- Regardless, another classic game first. Next up on the list: beating a damn Mega Man game.

Played Rock Band 2 yesterday for the first time. The allegedly more difficult songs for drums are really not that much of a change from the first one. I breezed through "Painkiller", and would have made it all the way through if I hadn't dropped my drum sticks at the instant the drum solo started -_- Still, always a good time.

Also: Castle Crushers, highly recommended. Get some friends over (or, in my case, go over to a friend's place) and break out the X-Box360 and roll this game out. Tons of old school beat 'em up old school fun.

Slightly aggravating thing happened after I got back home though. It was about 1:30, and I had to get up at 7:30 for my chemistry lab, and was dead set on going right to bed. I get home, and my mom's like "You can't go to bed yet, one of dad's old friends is in town and you need to meet him!" Wtf? Why do I need to stay up after 1:30 to meet my dad's old friend? I mean, I understand wanting to show off how well you bred, but seriously, I needs my sleep! I did end up meeting him, and he was pretty pleasant. But the lab was a little rough :)

[TheShroud13]

Proof there is no god: GlaDOS just got her shit rocked in GameFAQs's character battle by Falco Lombardi and Vincent Valentine. The entire video game community should be ashamed of itself. Good job on giving Wander the last place in that pairing though. Seriously. Not even a character.

[Steve Mcblark]

Umm....ok? I suppose it's a shame... :crazy: I mean, Final Fantasy and Star Fox are more popular franchises, you must admit...Glados got third, though over that character I've never heard of. (I don't think God has anything to do with it...heh)

[TheShroud13]

Half-Life is also a popular franchise, and GlaDOS is the best character from any game in the past century. And seriously? Falco? 0 personality. Star Fox has been irrelevant for at least two-three years too. Such a shame.

[Steve Mcblark]

Well, Star Fox did have it's great days. And although I do agree that Half-Life is a great franchise, Super Smash Bros. made characters like Falco much more widespread to the people who are voting on GameFaqs. So...yeah...

[TheShroud13]

I totally don't really care that much, and obviously from a statistical standpoint, GlaDOS not winning makes perfect sense.

However, in a world with a higher power . . . who knows what would have happened? Aside from me, who's reverse prophecy says that GlaDOS would have had a unanimous victory, leading to an unprecedented second polling to determine the second person to go on from that round.

[TheShroud13]

Skipped Class Meter: 3.5 - All Physics 101, with one class of Genetics.

Sometimes I hate being multi-talented. As great as it is to know that when people say "You can do anything you put your mind to," it's actually somewhat accurate (so long as we're not talking modeling, or things that require great physical strength or dexterity), and as great as it is that I'm more interesting than your average person because I'm so adept in a number of fields, I sometimes I wish I had the mind that would just let me pick a field, devote my whole life to it, and truly excel.

I mean, I'm having a hard enough time satisfying my personal hobbies (I want to get really good at the drums, I want to get really good at writing and producing music, I want to write good poems, I have a story that's been germinating in me for some time that I want to tell, I want to hang out with friends and at some point in my life try out that romance thing) and when you throw that together with school - which I also find very interesting, it gets very difficult to satisfy all my desires with the time I have. It's not like I'm doing poorly in any of my pursuits, but I could definitely do better and produce more output if I were actually specialize.

I was talking with my genetics professor the other day, and he mentioned to me that for most of his professional career that he's worked on research, without almost any weekend breaks, without ever missing a day of work save for six weeks when he had to attend funerals for his mother and father. Back when I was younger, I would have thought 'how dull', but now, sometimes I think I'd like to have that kind of motor for myself and really be of some use to the world.

Still, I don't think I'll ever change. I love the self satisfaction that comes from my myriad hobbies too much, and am not alarmed enough by being a high B/low A student to really change my habits to facilitate better schoolwork. Really, if I were to grade my aptitude for my hobbies, I'd probably give them lower grades (low A for music, low B for social life [I have the wit to make it work, but this is the only course I've ever gotten test anxiety for], mid B for poetry, C+ for general writing, low B for video games, high B for Rock Band), and I'm pretty happy with being able to do that well in all those different areas. But I do sometimes think about how great I could be at something if I were to actually pick a pony and ride it. And this is one of those times.

The grammar in this blog is brought to you by rushing to get to class on time.

[TheShroud13]

Really good day today. Started off with a chemistry lab that actually went far better than I was expecting, and talked with a person I've seen in a couple of my other classes and who seems like a decent possibility to start a friendship.

More importantly though, one of my friends was in town from college, and we hung out for most of the day. Very good timing as I was in the mood for a change of pace from lonely weekends ;) We watched Religulous, which despite a definite 'preach to the choir' movie, was good for some laughs. The movie was in pretty familiar territory, picked mostly obvious battles, and Maher could get a little bit cruel at times, but I enjoyed it regardless. He has a couple of really exceptional interviews with Vatican priests. I also thought that his concluding message, that the non-religious members of the U.S. need to start speaking up, and disputing the idea that faith is an unquestionably good value is one that resonated a great deal with me.

But it was really good to see my friend again. He seems to be doing quite well up at his university, and brought a good deal of entertaining stories home with him. It was very nice to have an actually thorough conversation with someone that didn't mostly just rely on the hot topics of the day. It was refreshing, and I'd been missing it lately. Even though I have been having fun in my own way :)

[Queen_Garnet]

I'm glad to see that you had a good day Richie! Hanging out with old friends is nice and to catch up with them and hearing their stories is great. Glad to know that you didn't miss that lab! ;)

[TheShroud13]

For the record. Playing 20 hours of a game over the course of two days is not compatible with the philosophy "staying ahead in school". Using the remaining time to fiddle around with music programs doesn't really help mediate the rift either.

Met another person that seems like they could be good fun to converse and hang around with. We'll see.

[Queen_Garnet]

Tell me about it! I have no idea what happened to me this semester. I'm truly wasting my time on playing or browsing the Internet and very VERY little in studying.

Keep us updated about that person Richie! We would love to know more about him! :)

[TheShroud13]

Been pretty busy lately. Lots of Rock Band, lots of idle interneting, lots of tv (both current and past) a bit of writing, and I've attended classes when I've had time as well. School's been pretty mediocre, but I'm not failing, so I can't be too disappointed. Over the last weekend, I watched seasons two and three of The Office in their entirety, which amounts to about seventeen hours and thirty-six minutes of TV. Did not get much accomplished that weekend.

In any case, today was a pretty surreal day, was driving around, and there would be spats of snow flurries blowing around with no real introduction, they'd just sorta pop up out of nowhere, not even being blown from nearby grass or anything. The sky was very clear too, so it was very very odd.

Last, there may kinda sorta be a possible kinda maybe girl type thing that I met at school that I could possibly maybe be interested in. She's in my genetics course in my chemistry lab, and we babble with each other from before class, and she's fun and I'm fun and it's usually good times. Can't really tell if she's interested though, she laughs at almost everything I say, but most people I meet do, and I can never tell who's legitimately enthralled, and who are just laughing to be polite, but I kinda get the feeling she's legitimately entertained by my presence. Course, entertainment doesn't always add up to interest, but that's besides the point. To add to my confusion, when I asked for her e-mail, she remarked that it felt like she was, in exact words "picking up someone at a bar," the meaning of which I don't understand on any level.

Regardless of her level of interest, she's fun to be around, and it's my hope that I'll ask her to hang out outside of class a couple times before the semester's over (which gives me about two weeks) and try to get a better sense of her. I don't know exactly what I'd suggest (and if any of y'all have any suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them) but I should be able to come up with something. She likes movies, so that's a possibility, but I'd rather do something a little more social to start out. In any case, that's about where that stands right now, I just wanted to vent a little bit about it because I don't really have anyone around here that wants to hear about it, but I want people to, so yeah ;) Good night everyone.

[Rain]

To add to my confusion, when I asked for her e-mail, she remarked that it felt like she was, in exact words "picking up someone at a bar," the meaning of which I don't understand on any level.

What she probably meant was...

Ermmm...well uhhhhhh...

?

?

?

oh yea. that probably means she would probably want to @%&* you, but she prolly would'nt want to philosophize with you and make babies w/ you.
:tpg::tpg::tpg:

[Marid]

Sounds like an ambiguous response to me. :) There's no way to really know what she meant without asking.

[NouveauShroud]

So. Pretty bad weekend. One of my really cloe friends who was away at Michigan Tech came back down for the weekend. It was god to see him, but I was reunited with one of my friends from the area who I haven't talked to since election day. It was probably better that we'd stayed away from each other. We seem mutually incompatible.

My chem lab is over, which is nice because it means I no longer have to wake up at 7:30 on Saturdays anymore, but is bad because hose labs were pretty much me at my mot socially active, so I don't know what I'll do to keep myself social now.

Woke up this morning, thought I would go to class, listen to some of my favourite tunes, get myself picked right up. There was a really beautiful, delicate snow too, so I thought I would have just what I need to get over the miserable weekend. I get to my car, only to find that my front side passenger window is shattered. All that was stolen was a cable for connecting my iPod to my car, but I'd still prefer that my car had a window. I end up late for class because I had to go back in and borrow my mom's car, and as much as I love skipping class, I hate being late. Plus, my mom's car has no iPod connectivity so I was stuck listening to Josh Groban on my way to class -_- Yuck.

So yeah, I do the class thing, get out, sign on to SEMO, only to discover that I no longer exist.

Apologies for the curtness, but this has been a very frustrating day. I need to go do something where violence is acceptable. Anyone up for a game of hockey?

Edit: And just to be totally accurate to my present mood: why the heck do computer labs always have to have the keyboards with the most decibel output available. Eyaghhhhh! Imma go crazy now.

[Steve Mcblark]

Crap, it would appear the stars have been defying ye, sir. That really sucks! I hope it all gets better and that we solve this problem with your screen name.

[NouveauShroud]

Bleh, to make matters worse, I got an opportunity to talk to the lady I'm kind of interested in and things actually started off really well. We got to chat for a little bit, but the moment her good friend showed up, I pretty much got boxed out of the conversation, save for a moment where she looked back at me to check if I was still alive or something. * sigh * I'm not made for this romance crap.

I think I'm going to go play Rock Band, break my drum kit, go to bed early, dominate my Chemistry exam tomorrow, go get this (http://www.emohairguide.com/WebPics/emohairwm.jpg) done to my hair, laugh at myself for being emo, and eat a burrito (my form of self-mutilation because I'm afraid of actually injuring myself, and the taste of a burrito is the closest thing I can do to myself to hurt myself, without actually hurting myself).

Is any of this really that big of a deal? Nope. But I'm a whiny, overly-sensitive little bitch (:

[NouveauShroud]

So, to make up for the pretty crummy start to last week, things have been pretty awesome since last Tuesday. Let's survey the happenings.

Tuesday: Spent almost all day working on a presentation for Physics. It was supposed to be a group project, but we all know how socially inept I am. Fortunately the teacher was kind enough to let me go it alone. It was actually really enjoyable to work on, though I was more interested in proving what I could accomplish with PowerPoint than anything else. And I did everything I had hoped to, so I was pretty pleased with that. Afterwards, a buddy of mine came over, we drank some really nice white beer, took a ride over to my friend's place, endured an appearance of his ex-girlfriend (who is way drugged out), and had a good time with hammered Rock Band. I actually sung this time too. Yikes.

Wednesday: Uhhhh...went to class all day, nailed my physics presentation, went to Buffalo Wild Wings with a few friends of mine (including one of my best friends who was back home from college up north), tasted (TASTED mind you. I had like a wing of each) the mango habanero and blazin' sauces and regretted it for about a half-hour. Got my wings with my precious asian zing and enjoyed the heck out of 'em.

So we get back to my friend's house, and one of my other friends instantly gets on the bitch fest. "Waaaaah, I hate hanging out with people, let's go do something. Waaaah, John's stories about his college life are so boooooring, let's go see Australia! Waaaaah, I told Casey (a friend he had brought along, who was clearly too hopped up on cold medication to really care what we did) you guys were fun! WAHHHH!" So we endured that while we all had a good time. Then after it all we finally got the confirmation we needed to call the bitch queen a homosexual as we watched him kissing the friend he brought along outside the house. Rock on.

Thursday: Probably the worst of the days, but still okay.

Drove Closet King to the airport. Couldn't get him to come out for himself though. * shakes fist *

Had to deal with über-catholicism at the Thanksgiving dinner (Obama's 'forged birth certificate' came up more than once), but the presence of a super-liberal family that normally does not dine with us at Thanksgiving helped balance the power. At the other side of the family's place, I basically got molested by dogs for a couple hours. Good times.

Friday: So this is the day where all the shit hit the fan. A couple of my friends asked me if I wanted to go hang out with them for some Black Friday shoppang. Seeing as both of these folks were visiting from their respective universities, and make me feel better than most people I know, I leaped at the opportunity. So we do that, and we get a call from one of my other really good friends, and asks if we want to hang out, and of course we accept. When we pick him up, John tells me that he needs to go get a DVD he left in Closet King's vehicle. Tony says that we absolutely need to go visit Closet King's house and get that DVD, as well as hang out with Closet King's mom and snoop around his house for anything else that might illuminate his persona (we've found all sorts of strange things in his house before, not the least of which were furry porn and autofellatio videos).

So we go over to Closet King's house, his mom invites us in to share in their second Thanksgiving with her family. !!! Free Food !!! AWESOME. We're also greeted by a dog with a frightening erection. Once we get inside, Tony and I yap with Closet King's mom, complain about a wedding between a couple of our friends who should NOT be getting married, while John and Peter go through Closet King's little corner of the world in the basement, and unfortunately find nothing of note. We then eat our food, drink a wee bit, and go off on our merry way. Nothing found, but the novelty of the situation was phenomenal. (If you think my friends and I are terrible people after this, just wait until I get to the bad part).

More later maybe, I'm sleepy.

[Don]

Shroud...

Wednesday...

went to Buffalo Wild Wings...

ARE YOU MAD? Why go on a NORMAL night? Tuesday is the night to go! Discounted WINGS!

But, you are in my good graces still because...

"Got my wings with my precious asian zing and enjoyed the heck out of 'em."

They are clearly the best kind!

[NouveauShroud]

Shroud...

Wednesday...

went to Buffalo Wild Wings...

ARE YOU MAD? Why go on a NORMAL night? Tuesday is the night to go! Discounted WINGS!

But, you are in my good graces still because...

"Got my wings with my precious asian zing and enjoyed the heck out of 'em."

They are clearly the best kind!

This is the work of the Closet King. His father has a million dollar salary, and frugality means nothing to him. Because he was trying to impress his boy with how much money he could spend, he insisted that we go out on Wednesday.

He was also leaving on Thursday and couldn't go that night, and we hadn't thought of it by Tuesday.

Regardless. Yes, it was shameful.

[Marid]

Is your family super Catholic? I didn't know that. I definitely feel for you, though...dinners with my family are similar.

[NouveauShroud]

My mother's side is. Around the same time I outed myself as an atheist, my uncle commanded my mother to give me to him on the weekends so he could fix their bad parenting. We were both very offended. He claims to have meant it as a joke in hindsight, but none of us believe it, even though he has lightened up with time. I'll be honest though, I enjoy spending time with them more than my father's side of the family, which basically just bores me thoroughly. At least the conflict at the dinner table gives us something to talk about. As opposed to me just sorta sitting around while a bunch of folks I share no recreational common ground with yap away about stuff I couldn't care less about.

But yeah, mom's side of the family is waaaaaaay drunk on the Cathohol.