Done

Finally finished that stupid paper and after I read two books tomorrow for Wednesday's class I am so taking a couple days off to finally relax.

On the nice front: no cough, cough, wheeze, wheeze.

I Hate Sigmund Freud

Still working on this paper. It's an incredible creativity drain.

Sunnier and Chirpier?

Not really, but definitely less depressed.

I put a bunch of comics on eBay and they aren't exactly selling well. Which is only a slight bummer, but there's always relisting and finances always seem to bounce back through the tighter times.

A nice bout of RPGing last weekend helped, as will some this weekend.

I have this stupid paper on Frued, Nietsche and guilt I have to write this weekend as well, so I'm still a little stressed out (as I always am when I have major homework due and haven't done it yet). This film class gives me more reading than some of my old literature classes ever did (up next is Dostoevsky and Crime and Punishment). Yawn.

I have to leave shortly to run the HeroClix tourney at the comic shop, and then we're nerdgaming at the Chrisses' tonight. Stuff to keep my mind in fun places.

Thanks to all the well-wishers.

the Summer of 1995

1995's summer was when I pulled up stakes because of Shelley Barker and high-tailed it to my brother's house seven hours south (more like nine now) in San Luis Obispo. It was also the summer I turned 21. It was the last summer where I was semi-athletically fit. I quickly took a job at one of the city's McDonalds food chains where I worked from 4:30 am to 1pm.

Shortly after my arrival there, two girls from Iowa, "Gina" and "Cassie", came out to SLO together and started working with me. The three of us became quick friends, as did one of our managers, Mark and a waitress from a real restaurant whose name was Rondi (actually, her name wasn't Rondi, and I haven't changed it here. She was under 21 and carried an ID she'd found with a girl who looked like her. The girl's name was Rondi and while I knew her real name, we all called her Rondi so frequently that years later, I can only remember her alias). The five of us partied pretty much every night. Not always all five of us together, but always some combination of the five of us. Shelley had found me and was phone-stalking me during the wee hours (as I was never there, it was really pissing my brother's wife off that I couldn't get her to stop calling at 1am every night), so I made sure I was never home to hear from her.

My typical day would be:
4:15: wake and rush to work
4:31-1: work
1:15-5: usually I would nap, often at the local illegal nude beach
5-6: eat
6-7: shower and prep for going out
7-2: party
2-4:15: sleep

I miss being young and being able to thrive on such a fucked up party and sleep schedule. When I go out with the boys in present day, I'm often hurting the next day.

I was incredibly, incredibly stupid that summer and I'm extremely fortunate I'm still alive and disease-free. I've no idea how frequently I had unsafe sex, but it was enough to really sober me up when I saw the film Kids that August. I also drank and drove 2-3 or so times and was very fortunate not to hurt anyone. It was all bliss, but as the cliche goes--all good things must end. Cassie grew incredibly homesick and announced she was moving back to Iowa.

Gina and I made a go at locating an apartment together, but it didn't happen. I packed all of my possessions into my truck and moved back north, into the spare room at one of my freinds' mom's house in Gridley. By December I'd went back down under the guise of visiting my brother in order to find Gina. I couldn't find her. What few people we knew together that I could find were far from helpful in giving me info on how to reach her. I went back home figuratively shooting myself for having run off in the first place. In April of '96, I was visiting my brother. He had found out that Gina had been driving with a friend and that they had been hit by a drunk driver at the same junction of highways where James Dean had crashed and passed. Gina and her friend had both died in the crash. The crash occured late that previous November. To this day I hold a lot of anger towards the people who knew about her death and wouldn't tell me.

Geez, Where've I Been?

Sorry for no posts the past few days.

To be quite short: I've been a tad depressed and stressed the last week or two. Add to that a heaping of schoolwork this week and I'm a bit overwhelmed. Hopefully a sunnier, chirpier me will be back and regular next week after my last paper is due and some ebay auctions have ended.

Peace

A Present For Chrissy

To my good friend Chrissy, hopefully this can help you with your tearing up "problem." Even though it is something I love about you, mi amiga.


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Stressed

I hate money. I hate having it; I hate needing it; I hate it.

That said, just found out our income tax refund is being taken to offset Denise's student loan debt, and as much as we needed some of that money, it really sucks.

SO I'm in a foul mood.

Humanimals

Back in the State of the Union address, Georgie Pordgie railed against cloning because those crazy Godless scientists would use the technology to make human-animal hybrids, as if it would be their priority to splice a turtle shell to a soldier's back or something...

And then today I finally got around to watching The Island. The ethics behind the plot aside (and I'd grow me a new body with two whole lungs in a heartbeat), why would anyone want to make humanimals when they could make a killing selling "product" like Ewan McGregor and Scarlet Johansson?

Just think of the money that could be made, politicians.

Fade Away

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I'm sure this isn't a quandary unique to myself: how a person or people can be such a part of your life one day and then just drift away. There doesn't always have to be a reason, either.

As a younger child, my best friends were Mike Stoney and Lincoln Joseph. We spent every day together, in school, after school, weekends. Inseparable. Drugs ultimately took Lincoln out of my life, but he lasted longer than Mike, who simply faded away for no reason. Adolescence brought a friendship with Joey Biggs so strong we felt truly brotherly towards each other; after I was the best man at his wedding the inevitable fade came again. Others come and go...when they're here, a part of you, the bond can be so intense, and then, even without any incident, a move perhaps, the total fade out.

This last year I've seen a decent number of friends fade away (Adj, Adam, Kel...). In May, Ian is going to move away to his sister's and that'll be the end (and I can see it making the fade occur throughout our entire group). Chrissy graduates June-ish and I expect her to get a great job somewhere else and move with Chris and the boys, and history has made clear what that means. And of course I want the best for them, for all of my friends.

Today I'm just feeling a little bit maudlin.

The Return of Cough, Cough, Wheeze, Wheeze?

Or cough, cough anyway?

I've had this cough again for some time. The doctors early on had me do a CT scan again to make sure everything was still fine post-surgery and everything was. This was back in early September or so. Cough got worse the past couple weeks while I dealt with an ear infection and cold. Now they're gone but cough's still here and a bit worse.

I need to call and get myself a dr. appointment, and hope I get a competent doctor, to check on this cough.

Hey Julie,

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I so love Scrubs. Not only is it the funniest show on tv (now that Arrested Development is gone), but it's a constant source of great new and retro music. In two weeks we've had Kung Fu Fighting, the Safety Dance and this gem by Fountains of Wayne. I dedicate this one to pal Julie Haehn.

Suddenly he wakes near 3 am

body is super tired but brain wants to stay awake. ugh to nth degree. sleepyness soon please

Puck It

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Given the whole gambling scandal, I wonder if Goldfinger still feels the same.

Sigh, just when I thought hockey might get back to normal.

A Bone to Pick

Ok, nerds are easy targets, but seeing as how most writers were more likely to be nerds than jocks, I'd expect maybe a little more sympathy when you see them in the media (oh wait, I bet these folks are self-hating nerds).

Last night's episode of Bones dealt with a plot involving a group of nerds who play their nerdgames live-action style (I won't get into defining that here. LARPing is a bit beyond me) and one ends up dead.

There is no sympathy played out for the other characters. They're all caricatures of nerdiness a la Comic Shop Guy from the Simpsons. Boreanaz's character even refers to them as "the type of nerds who burn their school down." Unless you're a particular mentally unbalanced person I know, you should understand how insulting that is (but if you need help, imagine me saying "Southerners are the type of Christians who burn down black churches;" which is wrong on so many levels). The vast majority of nerdgamers, even those who LARP, are not the sort of reality-challenged dolts who live their lives as if their characters are reality and their real lives aren't--despite what this show says to the contrary (when I was playing CJ in Ian's deadlands game, I didn't go around pretending I was a 16 year-old cross-dressing illiterate female Catholic gunslinger).

I get it. It's fun to poke fun at nerds. Go ahead. But don't be so blatantly ass about it.

One of their other attacks on nerddom should really insult everyone with a brain. Deschanel's character, to one of her underlings, at one point in the story says, with shocked revulsion, "you fantasize? I thought you were smart."

Remember this folks, only stupid people have fantasies.

My Lifelong Love Affair with Nerdiness (long)

Chris, over in his blog, recently gave me a bit of props in this post of his which discusses some of the xomics he considers great. And asked his readers to come here and pester me for reading suggestions (hey, go for it, folks). It's been a long week, and between the ear infection and school, kinda tiresome, so I thank Chris for giving me the kernal of an idea on posting here.

So here is my long-ish diatribe on comic books (sans any pumping of specific books) and other nerdiness. No matter how cool or grown-up I ever became, or didn't, I've always embraced my nerdiness as well.

As with most things, I don't really remember much prior to when I was hit by a car at age five. I do remember I had comic books back then--something Superfriends-y as I remember the Wonder Twins as more than just tv. But that's all. My first real memory of comics was at my grandmother's house. I was laid up in a body cast due to the aforementioned kid-car collision and she read a comic to me called Legion of Super-Heroes (this is/was a DC Comics title about a group of teenaged super heroes in the 30th century fighting intergalactic crime alongside a time travelling Superboy and Supergirl ('til the 1980's anyway)). I remember my grandmother having some debate over how to pronounce "Legionnaires," but I've come to realize this was her helping me learn to read and understand new words, not her being unable to pronounce "Legionnaire." My favorite super hero was a dude named "Karate Kid" (everyone was a "boy," "girl," "lad," "lass" or "kid" back then, and hokey as these codenames were, they are *it* for me--"Sun Boy" seems fairly straightforward in what he can do; how many non-comic readers can tell me what Speedy and Nightwing's powers are without looking them up?

Karate Kid was a Legionnaire who had no super-powers. He was just a bad-ass kung fu master with a knack for finding the weak points in anything. Maybe it was a reaction to my being laid up, but here was a guy who, powerless, would hold his own alongside his buddies and save the universe issue after issue. This level of humanity made him accessible to me (quick aside--Drew, did you see the latest issue of the latest reboot where we see Collossal Boy's family home? They're still Jewish!).

Other favorites of that time were Supergirl (through my exposure to her in the Legion book; apparently her own book was very hokey, but I've never read one) and the Flash (always attracted to the superspeed characters, hence Rael's middle name).

One of the nicest things my mom did for me was to let me keep buying comics books, and while I didn't have complete runs as a kid, I followed Flash and the Legion of Super-Heroes pretty regularly. Then, in the early '80s, a seven month span of comics almost revulsed me enough to send me packing for good (instead they just sent me packing away from DC for a decade). In a seven month stretch, comics had their first "cross-over" event in a limited series called Crisis on Infinite Earths. During this cross-over, the Flash was killed and Supergirl was not only killed, but erased from existence. During this time, Karate Kid was killed off as well. I was a pretty stunned eight year-old; it felt like DC was telling me they didn't like me by killing off all my favorite characters. Not long after, I discovered Kitty.

An issue of Uncanny X-Men caught my eye (issue #176 for those who want to keep track of these things). It had a facial close-up of two normal looking people--a red-headed chippee and a brunette dude in rose-tinted glasses. The issue had no costumes and told an adventure of soem dude named Scott Summers who was on his honeymoon with his wife Maddie (my current loathing of Cyclops will come another time). Their plane goes down and he has to save them from a giant octopus. I was hooked and scratched up the change for a few back issues, including a book where some funky sewer dweller with bad complexion kidnaps a teenaged girl named Kitty Pryde and tries to make her his bride (apparently Joss Whedon shares mine and Drew's Kitty fixation as he notes it himself when asked and she is part his inspiration for all of his girl-power characters like Buffy, River and Kayleigh). "Professor Xavier is a Jerk!" and the "Brood Saga" cemented Kitty in as my replacement comic fixation. At 13, she was older than me, but again my means for relating, as I got her angst. Kitty, and her best friend Illyanna, were my fictional guides through childhood. Their stories were my escape. In my early teens, Illyanna got killed off, and good writers quit writing X-Men stories with Kitty in them and I slowly drifted back into DC land (and aside from keeping up with X-Men, that's where I stayed, mostly).

As I grew older, DC introduced a "mature readers" line of comics. Primarily not super-hero, and fairly heavy on the supernatural with an abundance of British writers who liked to write grown-up (note: not pornographic comics; I've never owned one of those. These are all pg13 to R rated fare) stories, they had a growing appeal. As an adult, books like Hellblazer (which the film Constantine is based on), Sandman, House of Secrets and Books of Magic were my thing. Somehow, I couldn't make myself not by super-hero comics, but I bought fewer and liked even fewer.

While there's a kid in me who will always hold certain superheroes and their stories dear, for the most part, I find super hero books nowadays to be more drek than anything. I cherish the memory of my childhood and early adolescent comics. Comics are so much more than super-heroes and you should give one a try.

I'd be happy to help make a suggestion for you.

Assorted Camera Captures

Another photo from Aeia's birthday party--the kids decorating cupcakes.



Aeia, Lash and Rael taken late January.



Rael in the "Level 1 Human" onesie that Drew bought for him (thanks!)



Aeia taking her first picture with her new Polaroid camera.

Birthday's Past

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Saturday was Aeia's 6th birthday. While nobody came who didn't RSVP (and we only invited people her own age on short notice), we had a lot better turn out for her birthday than I expected (given said short notice and lower turn-out at Lash's parties).

I was afraid we wouldn't have enough activities ready for the kids, and came to discover that when bunches of five and six year olds (and a couple older) congregate, they're pretty good at finding their own ways to be noisy and entertained beyond whatever you plan.

Aeia had a great time, which is what matters most.

They Should Be Recruited by the FBI

Initially, I chalked my ex, Shelley's stalking prowess as the mad skills of the mentally deranged (a thesis that does seem to grow as of late--all the craziest people I know seem to also be the best stalkers), but something's happened to make me question that theory.

Maybe Shelley's psychosis isn't what made her a great stalker; maybe it's her religion (she being a Mormon and I being an inactive one).

When we moved back in September, I got this form letter in the mail from the LDS Church. It had my name, birthdate and address and asked if I, living at my new address, happened to be the same dude. Thinking it the easiest way to close that chapter of my life, I checked the box indicating "No, I am not the droid you're looking for" and mailed it back to them.

Fast forward to a couple weeks ago and two of the local missionaries are at my door. They're asking for me by name and want to know if there is anything they, or the church, can do for me and mine. I'm too polite and sent them packing nicely. What I learned was, my answering the "no" box meant nothing; they continue to have me as a registered member of the local ward and they know how to find me. This last is most scariest if Shelley ever has another psychotic break and decides we're "meant to be together" again.

(I've actually been putting off this post because someone I'm friendly with in real life, who recently revealed themself as a reader of this blog, is also LDS and I felt weird about blogging this. Of course, this person is not a psychotic or a stalker, nor do I really think all Mormons are--but apparently they'd be pretty good at it if they wanted to)

Sick

Am congested and have an ear infection. It sucks.

First Local Join Me Project

On Saturday, February 4th there will be a collection drive for blankets, sleeping bags, coats and tents that are clean and in good condition. These items will be donated to the people of Pakistan. The organizers (Project Hope or Project Save or somesuch) could use a few extra hands. Anyone who has some time is welcome to JOIN ME at P.V. High School to help sort the incoming donations. The collection will run from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm, but even if you can only spare a couple hours in the morning or afternoon it will be appreciated.

Saturday evening at 5:00 pm Joinees (and prospective Joinees!) are encouraged to gather at the Graduate to celebrate our good deed! Hope to see everyone there (even if you can’t make the morning event).

Ryan will have “JOIN ME” T-Shirts available soon. White shirt, black print on the front – “JOIN ME!”. Cost will be $6.25 each and they should be ready Friday, just in time for the project.


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School Work

Had my first meeting of Religion in Film on Monday. We watched Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors--my first time with this movie. Not bad. Even though I already own some of the remaining movies we'll be watching this term, I'm really looking forward to seeing them and putting them into the context of the course: Grand Canyon; Changing Lanes (ok, I might not be looking forward to being Afflecked as much as the rest); Magnolia (another I actually haven't seen; Jacob's Ladder; Breaking the Waves; Do the Right Thing; Before the Rain; and Three Kings (I'd rather see how he tackles other Russell films such as Spanking the Monkey or I heart Huckabees).

We're allowed to bring guests to the movie nights, so Chris, or other local readers, if you ever want a Monday night out from the daily hum-drum, you're welcome to come along.