Yup. Sometimes you need something a little less human, a little less pop, a little less happy-go-lucky, to calm you. It's like giving an ADD kid stimulants, I guess.


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Got back to the dorm yesterday; new term starts tomorrow. I guess today is trying to be the paste between two very different modes of functionality, from doing absolutely nothing useful over winter break to revving up a term with one of the hardest classes of my major and trying to forget (but not replicate) how bad I did last term. Obviously, today wasn't long enough, but everyone's in the same boat and it really shouldn't be that bad.

I forced myself to resolve my class schedule after I got up. Part of the reason I was dreading going back to college was, I had no idea what classes I was taking exactly, and nobody likes making hard possibly regrettable decisions. I went to the bookstore to find out what books would be needed, and after seeing the book for Graphic Design which would have explained how to use Adobe Creative Suite CS2, I changed my mind and decided to take Anthropology instead of that. I ordered my textbooks online ($190 bookstore vs. $105 online? dur) and was done with that.

Jeff took me shopping. Along with the very large batch of rice I made today, I have plenty of good food for the next few days. I am going to try harder this term to feed myself, and make good and healthy food even if I feel busy and stressed and not hungry. Cooking can be therapeutic anyway. Hopefully that doesn't lead to waste. I'll probably still slack majorly on cleaning dishes though. Eh.

Then the laundry. By then I really started to feel not-so-good about school tomorrow. Though my first class starts at 10, I need to wake up before 7am for work (or at least to see if I can start work again this term, but I'd be surprised if I don't start tomorrow morning). I love what work does for me, both in attitude and income, but the 7am thing can really kill my spirit sometimes. Naps are okay, but I do need to go to bed earlier to get 8+ consecutive hours of sleep during the night... That means I should go to bed half an hour ago. Before 11pm. That'll be hard.

While running the laundry I put on some Nautilis for my nerves and started to get my binder ready for tomorrow. Clearing out all my old notes, and putting them into appropriate portfolios. Carefully jotted notes from math; doodles from assembly; tests, both great and awful, from each of my classes. I need more portfolios to store the rest of my classes. Hopefully I can snag more from the tech writing teachers soon (apparently they do not keep them!) Anyway, moving out these papers helped me move on from last term a little bit. It's all grouped with the stuff from last term now. Out of sight, out of mind? Not totally gone, but I've readied myself as much as I can to start anew. Today is the paste.

Now to fetch my dry laundry and stock this binder with fresh paper.

My dreams have been getting a little more violent, a little more disturbing than I'd really like to explain, but it kind of made sense after getting back my Assembly test today. As soon as I saw it I slipped it onto my laptop keyboard and closed the lid. My laptop: a fancy folder for things of shame. While he went through each question of the test on the projector, I sang pretty songs to myself in my head and played movies overlaying the scrolling gibberish code on the projector screen. Movies of people riding roller coasters, raising their arms, squinting, laughing, hair flapping in their faces. Some of them fell into giant meat grinders. I tried to keep them on for the most part.

I have a job now, and even though it starts at 7am, I like it well enough. The tasks are simple and not unpleasant, and I enjoy the stillness of the early morning. I worked alone, which I'm also fairly used to.

Things are really coming down now, though. The tests were last week, but I'm buried under labs and miscellaneous homework now. And I don't know what to eat. I had a Pepsi for lunch, and to be honest, I think that did more for me than a full lunch could've done at that point. Not that I have the food now to make a full lunch. Remaining quart of milk goes bad, and boom, suddenly I have nothing to eat--or at least I have no creative ideas at the moment.

On the bright side, my room is nice. Over the weekend I cleaned up the place. I vaccuumed, turned off the heater, and aired it out completely. I played LCD Soundsystem and Kraftwerk while I krafted hooks out of paperclips (mmm, using wire cutters and pliers makes me feel manly) and hung scarves from the walls. My room was transformed from a depressingly blank muggy and yeasty bedroom cell to an open, airy, colorful and comfortable living space. I left my door open while I was polishing my work, and some neighbors actually walked in and stayed to chat a bit. They were not software majors. I'll have to take a little effort to keep it this nice. I should leave my door open more often, too.

Another 5-hour night of sleep, then labs labs labs.

Something for pure aesthetics. Maybe something with
unspilled saliva, unspoken tears of consolation,
something to make up for unpaid dues. Lines
of English devoid of purpose or any sort
of profundity. Maybe some big words
the kind that isn't used all that
often, to give it a sense of
uniqueness? Though the
feeling isn't really
unique. People feel
empty all the time
People stay up
late at night
all the time
for reasons
pointless
baseless
like me
tonight
every
night
this
week
for
nil

And when I do decide to go to bed, how wonderful
these vivid dreams are. Sure, they're strange like
most dreams you hear babbled from your friends when
you don't really care to know the details of nonsense
but it's mostly the feeling I crave. The nicest plays
out after waking up first from the sounds of the morning
all happening around me while I continue to sleep in, now
slightly roused from the deep dark state of rest, my brain
revving its creative engine to feed me stories of some world
I've never been to but is incredibly familiar. What stands out
most about it is how fun it is. It's fun. Forget games, forget
watching television or movies. This is even more real. Feels
even more real than real life sometimes. It's bold, so full
of color and feeling. I don't even remember most of what
I experienced in these dreams, but I remember waking up
and seeing the clock, not wanting to see the clock
but my body somehow knows the time and why it is
crucial to my success in life. In real life.
Real life. I'm happy in real life, I know
I am. Things are going well. Maybe I
am not living it totally the way
I should, but I try sometimes

And the hardest things to put into words
even in senseless varying lines of prose
will stay locked in. Dust will settle
and details will fill the ridges
and whatever keeps me up tonight
will take a Vicodin.

I see you, and you, and you.
I can only imagine how you're feeling.
I wish I could help, but I'm not sure how.

Talk about cravings. And all I'm doing is reading music discussions on a site. There was no warning, no warning.

(I hotlinked all these avatar images. Sorry if that's a problem.)

I love the detail in this shot. You can see how fresh the syrup is, and I can almost smell the tang of the raspberries.


Are you serious? These brownies, I would stab all three with a single fork and NOM.


Is this chocolate milk? Yeah, I'd need this to wash down the waffles and brownies.


I don't even know what this is, either. But I would eat the heck out of it.


Fries are always good. The topping looks like thousand island dressing and mustard, but it doesn't matter--a little salt after all this sweetness would be fresh.


Yes please.


Mmm, how pretty and dainty! I do love chocolate.


A very simple and elegant avatar, great shot of this cherry tomato. I love fresh tomatoes.


I don't care that this is supposed to be witty--I like pie crust, a lot, and I like what's inside of it too. With neither a laugh nor smile I would pluck that thick pi symbol out of the top crust and enjoy it before digging into the rest.


Mmmm, more waffles. Shaped like hearts, no less! How cute! Is that supposed to be dipping sauce? Maybe not, it looks like strawberry yogurt. I would still try dipping them though. I love how homecooked and real this photo is.


Uh, bacon. This would be a no-brainer.

I have an hour for lunch between Differential Equations and Assembly Language, and after a pretty alright first day so far, I felt like cooking a little. I'm mostly happy because I didn't take so long that I had no time to eat, but I'm excited enough now to be writing a blog, so who knows.

Just to share:

- one potato
- one cheapo Bar-S hot dog
- onion
- seasoning... or soy sauce
- Adam's crunchy peanut butter?

First I followed this WikiHow to remind myself how to microwave a potato so I didn't have to wait for it to cook in the pan. By the time I got to the kitchen I forgot the times, but I popped my fairly small potato in there for 3:30, which worked fine. Less might have been better--it was incredibly soft and flaky.

While it was in there I chopped up a slice from my onion and got the pan ready. When it was warm I dropped in the onion and let it sizzle, and I quickly chopped and added the hot dog. I had no spatula so I used a plastic spoon/handle of my paring knife to move things around. The potato came out and it had cooled enough to handle, so I mutilated it a bit and threw it in too. They weren't moving around in the pan very well because of a lack of oil, and I slightly panicked because I didn't have any in my possession. I turned down the heat and fetched the peanut butter from my room added a dollop to the pan, and it made things stick in clumps, while some of the peanut butter just burned on the pan. But I did the best I could to mix it up with my paring knife handle and quickly moved on. I felt weird to add soy sauce just after the peanut butter, but I sprinkled some in. It sizzled satisfyingly. I shook the frying pan around a bit and I was done.



I was a bit afraid to taste it, but I figured the worst it could taste like was potatoes and cheap meat covered in peanut butter and soy sauce. Indeed, that is what it tasted like, and it was not that bad. It was actually kind of good, and the crunch provided by the undercooked onions and peanut butter was fun. I glanced at the clock and saw I had only taken 20 minutes to prepare and cook the whole thing.

This is only my first self-cooked meal at school (ramen doesn't count) and I am glad to not be scarred. I know it's dirt simple but it's a first step, and I want to chronicle my progression.

Time for Assembly!

It'd be some sort of infinitely huge building with a billion lounges/soundproofed rooms, and you can plop down on a cushy chair and access any music you want to. You can say the name of an artist or a name of an album or just a genre, and a sexy robot will bring you a tray of albums. If you wanted to though, you can look at the Top 10 charts posted on the walls, or look through the lovingly arranged scrapbooks placed on bookshelves around the room.

Of course you might see people in the same room, even looking at the same things you are, but everyone would politely and quietly share--you are all there for the same reason: music. You see people writing comments on a post-it on an album. You see people listening carefully to music through high end headphones to confirm the quality. You see people opening their backpacks or duffel bags of CDs and vinyls and registering them with the robot.

But if you want to socialize with these other people, then the giant dining hall/courtyard is the place to go. There are clubs, discussion tables, and help desks. Some people even settle down and play music for passerby. This is also where bulletin boards are placed for people to post want ads for albums.

This massive, bustling community--any old outsider can't see it. There's some sort of entrance, maybe, but the rest is a mirage.

Out of the last 10 blog posts, I've only published 3 of them. That's a lot of drafts. That's just how it's been recently. I have a thought, an idea, then poof. Something goes awry and nothing happens.

I really miss writing, and I wish I had the energy for it like I used to. I still get lots of words sometimes, particularly when I'm tired so that language part of my brain ripens like wine. But I splatter this wine through speech (me? being social at work?!) or through text on the internet (I've found some people on Facebook don't appreciate my comments). Discourse, that's good, but there's something to be said about writing for myself. Journaling. Or writing essays, articles, reviews; writing pieces of that nature, for posting on here or anywhere. Things that maybe others could find useful, something I can take a little pride in creating. Of course it's more of the latter than the former, but I'm convinced it's still a good thing. But it takes energy.

Where has my energy gone? It's probably tangled and soaked by the messes I've got everywhere else. That's both literal and metaphorical. I'm a slob, and the task of cleaning my room has been pending for the last three months, or since whenever I moved back from school. I take slight relief in moving out for school again, to be forced to shove everything in boxes again to remove from this war zone of a bedroom. Halfway-started projects lie waiting for a better day everywhere I look. This is another reason I cannot clean my room. This computer taking up most of the table space? I need to buy a wireless card/wifi dongle for it. I also want to buy a bigger hard drive for it, but I'm not sure what brand to trust for it. CDs are scattered across that desk waiting to be ripped or scanned, but I have not plugged my scanner in yet because the cord for it is somewhere I've forgotten. Documents, letters, and to-do lists tangle among the clothes, electronics, and other random objects on my bed. My laptop, resting on my pillow, has been running for 312 hours at this time. I feel like my karma is wearing thin with every day I go without contacting the friends and family I've been wanting to contact.

Multitasking. That's what I think I'm doing, and sometimes I even fancy myself good at it, but I'm not. All these unfinished projects are a result of my badly trained working memory. This brings me to an article I saw the other day on Lifehacker which felt all too true for me. So I need to get back to doing one thing at a time, right? At least when it matters. Or, I could go the evolutionarily dominant route, and give up. Just drop my little projects. Yeah, just close Firefox, close these 25 tabs acting as 25 reminders of little tasks I for some reason feel like I need to get done.

Scrap it.

What if you die next month? Next weekend? Tomorrow? You never know what's around the corner. One little faux pas, and it could release horrendous consequences that extinguish your flame like a thumb and forefinger. Gone.

Gone. With no time beforehand to protect your computer.

unshifted on Reddit narrates a potential posthumous happening:

They'll have to learn how to use computers after you die. Who else can [your parents] turn to? Then one day while feeling whimsical, they'll go through the files on your computer. They'll find some papers you wrote ("He sure was a smart kid, wasn't he?" they'll say, teary-eyed). Then they'll find some political cartoons you've saved. It will remind them of you. Their loss will feel real to them all over again.

Then one of them will say, "Aw shucks, we need to update the pictures we have hanging around in the house. He probably has a couple pictures of himself on here. What's that thing we learned in that computer literacy class we took to honor his memory? Ah, yes. We'll just search for pictures and movie files. We'll be able to find the right ones." Then they'll see it. The search results for E:\Program Files\AIM95\config\default.

It's all downhill from there. They'll change your epitaph to "Here lies Liru. Filthy heathen sure loved tentacle porn."

Quote from a thread on Reddit on this topic.