Thanksgiving Weekend

Well, even though Katie was the one who convinced me to come down for thanksgiving, I didn't get to see her at all during break. Not exactly surprised. I get the feeling that I only see her by coincidence or when she wants something from me. I was silly to think that she'd actually want to spend any time with me.

However, the quality of my break was not contingent on seeing her; that was just a goal of mine. I enjoy the affection that I get from her when we hang out, even if it is just a tool for her to get what she wants from me. You would think that I would actually be upset with her for using me for my computer skills, but I'm really not. After all, I'm just using her for her affection. :)

The rest of break was pretty banging, as Tushar says. Got home on Wednesday night at about 9pm, so I just hung out with my parents all night. My dad and I tried to go out and get pizza that night, but everything was closed or abandoned. Is was really weird and kind of disappointing.

Thanksgiving day was a very stereotypical East Thanksgiving. My grandparents came over and we had pork steak florentine, creamy cheese squares, and pumpkin pie. It was good, I guess, but nothing terribly exciting. For the rest of the day, my dad and I hung out together and watched the first two Planet of the Apes movies.

On Friday, my dad and I watched two more Planet of the Apes movies. At the end of the second movie, Dunning called me and invited me to the Trans Siberian Orchestra concert at the Scott Trade Center in Saint Louis. That concert was very loud, very bright, and very fun. It was the first time seeing them in concert, so I was more than happy to go. It was really nice spending time with Dunning too since it was the first time that I've really felt like I was home for months.

Saturday was pretty uneventful during the day. I spent most of the day waiting to see if Katie called me while I hung out with the family and went shopping for new pants since mine were ready to rip in half at the crotch. Since she didn't call, I went and hung out with Alex early at his house and then we had game night at seven where Jake, Dunning, and TJ joined us to play Settlers, Zombie Fluxx, and Bang. Needless to say, it was super awesome. I honestly wish I could do this every weekend.

Today, I've just sat around all day, packing and talking to people online as I'm waiting to take off for home again. It's going to be a long day of nothing.

Adventure Lite?

Well, I said I was going to have an adventure tonight and apparently, I meant it.

Currently, I am sitting in a bakery in Champaign with apple pie, Mountain Dew, and internet. How did I get stranded in such a wonderful position? Let me tell you.

Colleen wants my help tonight with getting the data off of her laptop and onto a portable hard drive. There are probably other people who could help her, but I have the materials and have done it before, so it's not a big deal.

Anyway, we decided that since Spencer would be going to Narnia House for Heroes tonight and she would be there anyway, I could hitch a ride with him over there and make things convenient for all of us. I checked with him and he said that was cool if I didn't mind going over to the pet store first and then entertaining myself until Heroes.

Well, when we picked up Jessica, it was obvious that would be a problem. She wanted to spend the entire evening with Spencer alone without me around. For me, that was fine as I didn't want to hang out with them, but wanted to hole myself away in some corner and work on my laptop or reading. I thought it would still be fine for me to get a ride to Narnia House and find some place away from people to stay until Colleen showed up and wanted to work with me.

While we were traveling through Champaign, Jessica started getting really bitchy and asked when they were going to drop me off since my apartment was in the other direction. It was at this point that I told Spencer to find a convenient parking lot to pull into so I could get out. He pulled into Colonial Pantry and I got out.

I figured that since I was in Champaign anyway, I might as well grab something to eat. Considering my options, I opted to go to a bakery where I could get something small along with a bottle of Dew and be undisturbed as I sat around typing on my laptop.

So voila, here I am. Now, I just have to get to Narnia House before 8 so I can work on Coll's computer. The bus station isn't too far away, so it shouldn't be too hard.

Beta-Testing Gwabs

So, over a year and a half ago, you may remember that I was interested in a new Mortal Kombat style fighting game that took place on your desktop with cartoon like characters called Gwabs. Even though it wasn't due out for a couple months, I preordered it to reserve my spot and get a chance to beta test it while helping the start-up company Cambrian House.

Well, much later than expected, Gwabs has entered private beta. Thursday of last week, I was invited to be one of the first beta testers. I honestly don't mind waiting so long for this. Not only is it a great game from a company with a great business idea, but the opportunity is coming at a time where I can afford to spend lots of time doing testing and bugging the creators with ideas.

There are a few problems with the game, but that is to be expected since it's just starting up. All of the characters look a lot like 42 from Hitman so far and there are only two missions which can only be completed multiple times if you keep hitting the retry button. The website is only partially functional, leaving out a lot of the features that I'm incredibly eager to have released. But that's okay. These are things that I'm just impatient for.

What I really want is for there to be more people online so I can test it out better. The most people I've ever seen online at once is three which is indicative of just how private this Beta is. They told us to let them know if we had friends who'd also like to become operators and join the private beta, but unfortunately, my friends are the wrong type of gamers or are just plain too busy right now. I really want to play with some of my friends.

If you want to get a feel for Gwabs, watch this preview. A lot of it is accurate except for the character specific powers, but that's just because those characters haven't been released yet, I have a feeling.

Trapped

I feel trapped in my life, really unable to talk to anyone. I know that is what this blog is for, but I've let it become compromised. I'm scared of everyone and everything. I feel so terribly alone right now. I just want someone to talk to, someone to trust.

Tastes Like Evil

Even though I had a huge day ahead of me filled with papers and homework when I reluctantly woke up this morning, it all fizzled to naught by noon. I guess that's a good thing, but now I'm sitting in the English building, sipping a huge can of sugar-free RedBull, with nothing to do. If I knew things were going to work out this way, I would have brought my World of Darkness corebook to read. (Of course, if I had brought it, all hell would have broke loose and I would never have had time to read it.)

I watched three seasons of Red vs. Blue over the past two nights with Jaden and Lynley. That really brought back old memories. Unfortunately, those days are truly dead and gone and never to return, as they say. All I can hope for is to build something new with some of the qualities if the past. I'm working on it. It's a slow process. Rome wasn't built in a day and neither was the Family.

Speaking of which, I talked to my parents more about buying a house. They said that I should expect to buy a house that costs twice my yearly salary. Well, if that's my limit, I can afford to live in a car. I guess I'll have to wait till after next year to buy a house if I can even afford one by then. Since a low-end house here costs something close to a hundred grand, it may be a while before I can afford a real house. I was really hoping to buy a house soon, so I'm a little disappointed.

Just talked with Professor Rubins about doing independent study with him. I decided that since I wasn't sure that I would be able to devote as much time to the class as I wanted to, I wouldn't take the official class, but I'd still take the additional time to write and try and get something publishable by the end of the semester. Professor Rubins said that he was more than willing to help and would be willing to look over work that I did. Now, just to push myself to do some actual work.

I still haven't done anything for NaNoWriMo and this month is almost over. I don't know whether it is the amount of other work that I'm doing, writer's block, or just the distaste of doing something that millions of other people are doing, but I just can't seem to get started. I think it may have to do with the fact that I feel a book is something that you should pour over, scour very carefully, and devote a large portion of your time to instead of just writing as fast as you can to pump out crap. However, NaNoWriMo is a good writing exercise and I know it. I really should be doing it.

Anyway, off to class to turn in a proposal that will most likely be rejected.

Tiny Post

Haven't posted a real post in a while, partly because I was busy doing other things like shooping. I've really been enjoying doing photo manipulations, even if some other people are less than enthused about me putting the King into the background of their pictures. After all, it gives me great pleasure and a little bit of experience with different techniques. Besides, it's gotten the attention of a few people who are appreciative of my talents and who have asked me to do some things for them. It also gives me a reason to hang out with Katie more which is exciting, I won't lie.

Man, I'm too tired to create a real post. Maybe I'll post more when I have more energy.

Apathy

Normally I hate these things, but Ryon's really made me laugh, so I'm copying it from him.

1. Put your music player on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button.
As per usual there will be a few funny ones. I'm going to go ahead and bold my favorites.

1. If someone says, "Is this okay?" you say:
International Killer

2. What would best describe your personality?
Chemical Warfare

3. What do you like in a dude or dudette?
Welcome

4. How you feelin' today?
No Life

5. What, exactly, is your purpose in life?
Jesus Antichristus (recently deceased mix)

6. What is your motto?
Fatalist

7. What do your friends think of you?
All Revved Up With No Place to Go

8. What do you think about frequently?
Warriors of Destiny

9. 2+2=?
What a Day

10. What do you think of the person you like?
Feel So Numb

11. What is your life story?
Missing Link

12. What do you want to be when you grow up?
Jesus Online

13. What do you think when you see the person you like?
Nothingness

14. What do your parents think of you?
Devil's Path 2000 (apt...)

15. What will you dance to at your wedding?
Evacuate

16. What will they play at your funeral?
Epicentre

17. What is your hobby or interest?
Before I forget

18. What is your biggest secret?
Towards the End

19. What do you think of your friends?
Your Pilot

20. What's the worst thing that could happen?
The Beginning of the End

21. How will you die?
Sin in Numbers

22. What's the one thing you regret?
Tell me Why

23. What makes you laugh?
Hang Him Higher

24. What makes you cry?
Mistakes

25. Will you ever get married?
State of Emergency (I guess that means no...?)

26. What scares you the most?
Futile

27. Does anyone like you?
Pay Off

28. If you could go back in time, what would you change?
Beloved (Grey Down Version)

29. What hurts right now?
Endless Light

30. What will you post this as?
Apathy

Wow, I have a very apocalyptic and pessimistic iTunes...

When you see it....

...You'll shit brix.

Intentions vs. Results

I've been toying with the idea of writing an entry for today and even had an idea of what I wanted to write, but that idea has somehow escaped me. Therefore, I guess whatever I write here will be fairly random.

Finally mailed off my letters to Canada, but ran out of stamps so I'm going to have to postpone my letter to Scotland until I get some more. I really want to get that letter out by Friday so I can feel like I finally did something important.

Went to my first class and discovered that I needed to have a paper topic to the teacher by tomorrow for our big research paper. I didn't even know that we had a big research paper, so I was quite surprised, to say the least.

Decided to skip my second class to actually read the material for the class, but ended up cleaning up the apartment and doing photo manips instead, shown here.

From this:
I made these:


From this:


I made this:


Overall, they're nothing special, but I had fun making them. In fact, I was having so much fun with them that I forgot to eat lunch. I quickly remedied that before writing this post by downing some chips and salsa.

I was planning to go to my third class, but remembered that it was canceled and signed up to do an extra work shift, only partly because Spencer wanted to talk to me in person about Larp. I could use the extra money anyway. I plan on taking the book to my second class of the day and doing the work that I didn't do earlier. Maybe I'll remember what else I was going to post on and make another post for today.

Ill

I feel so terribly sick right now. I'm having violent and erratic mood swings that don't make much sense, I feel like I'm going to vomit all of the time, and my face feels incredibly warm. I'm reminded very much of Alex's illness in the Clockwork Orange. It helps that I have been feeling like I'm going to snuff it for a while now. If I didn't know that the cause of this sickness was just emotional distress of some sort from a really rough, intense weekend, I would think that I was horribly diseased. However, the thing that proves that it is an emotional sickness and not a real illness is because there are times that I feel great and on top of the world which come as often as the intense stomach pain and need to vomit sensation.

If this gets to be too much, I may have to enact the Dunning Principle.

On Making Friends

I have finally figured out a quantitative reason for why it is so hard to enter into meaningful relationships at college. In retrospect, I'm really surprised that I haven't figured this out sooner. It all has to do with the sheer amount of time that you spend with people.

In high school, you spend at least and hour interacting with the same 30-60 people every day, five days a week. Through even such a minute interaction every day, you slowly build up a firm relationship and gain a good basic understanding of who those people are because you spend at least five hours a week with them, often more.

Once you have built up such a solid foundation for a relationship with 30-60 people, it is inevitable that you will find people that even more closely relate to you and your personality preferences. That being the case, you start to hang out with them at school and end up spending quite a bit more time with them, whether it be in class, at lunch, or in the halls. Even if you only increase your interaction with these people to two hours a day in school, you are suddenly spending ten hours a week or more with them and you get to really hash out the intimacies of your relationship with them, even if you don't do so verbally.

Now, the people that you hang out this much with at school tend to hang out together through simple proximity if not by like mindedness. This group of friends will often form a network or mesh of relationships and build one single giant relationship together, making a sort of family. They will hang out together outside of school, go places together, do things together, often spending forty or more hours a week in each other's presence. This allows ample time to build quality relationships fairly quickly.

After four years of this type of interaction, you leave high school with a very close knit group of friends. Even with those people you've only had low-grade positive interaction with, the sheer amount of time that you interact with them tends to transcend group barriers, allowing for all of them to become your friends in earnest.

Compare that to College life. In a large college where you are able to take hundreds of different classes in different orders, it is unlikely that you will have more than a few people that are the same in different classes. The average class only meets two to three times a week and has generally over a hundred people in them. That being the case, you are lucky if you spend more than three hours a week with the same people that you do not know.

Spending so little time with people that you do not know significantly slows down the initial process of getting to know people and in turn, slows everything else down immensely. Therefore, what would normally take only a month or two may take a year or more, lessening the possibilities of forming well developed relationships.

To make matters worse, the people that you see in your classes for one semester are very likely to not be in class with you next semester. Therefore, all of the work that you put into forming a foundation of a relationship comes pretty much to naught. There will likely be a few people that you see from class to class, but instead of forming a relationship with them based on genuine like, you tend to form a relationship with them out of the desperate need for some sort of connection with anyone and the fact that you've had a previous class with them provides that connection.

This is the reason that RSOs and church groups become so popular on campus. Unlike with classes, these groups provide a guarantee that you will interact with the same people week after week in a setting that assures that you have some sort of common interest. The problem with these groups is that they are often too narrow. Even though you may have something in common with the people therein, that does not necessarily mean that your personalities will match up. Since most RSOs tend to hang out in groups of thirty or less to make a practical event (though they may have larger meetings or special events), there is a very small pool to find someone who meshes well with you. More often than not, you will find a few people who mesh with you, but rather awkwardly and with these people, you will form the rocky foundations of a friendship. Since RSOs only meet a few times a week for a couple of hours, the development of these rocky foundations are slow going and leav lots of gaps, making them even rockier.

Because the foundations for these friendships are often rocky, they are also unstable. This sort of unstable friendship that falls apart where the people's friendships start to unmesh and tends to cause disagreements that sabotage the friendship as a whole just because the people involved have a hard time trusting one another, not knowing exactly how one feels about the parts of themselves that they are insecure about.

I may be wrong, but I really feel that this is the problems that I've been having trouble understanding since I've come to college and the reason that I find it extremely hard to make friends. I never could pinpoint the process before, but I think I've got it down now.

The question is, how do I apply this knowledge?

Unamerican

I am possibly the most unamerican American that I know.

Yesterday was Election Day, as you all know, and instead of being excited to get to vote in the presidential election for the first time, I fit it into my schedule between lunch and video games as one of the chores I needed to do before the day was out. When I actually went to vote, I went reluctantly, not viewing it as a right or privilege, but as my unfortunate civic duty. I didn't really want to vote, but I know that nothing will get done in this country unless a majority of adults voice their opinion on how to run the country. Therefore, I voted.

When I found out the news that Obama won, I was not fanatically excited like many of my friends. Don't mistake me, I'm glad he won as he is who I voted for because I think he'll be a positive change to our country, but I don't think he's some miracle worker who will solve all of the country's problems. He's a human like the rest of us, but with a few good ideas. As such, I don't see the cause for a huge celebration. There's still a long way to go in this work and I won't be cheering until it's all over.

Weird Night

This probably won't seem weird to anyone but myself, but I wanted to post it anyway just because I thought it was.

My weird night started out as I was walking down the hall towards the exit of DCL after work. A guy was standing there in a sporty biker jacket, carrying a biker helmet, and we looked at each other at the same time. He walks up to me and the following conversation ensued:

Biker Guy: Patrick?
Me: Why, yes.
Biker Guy (pulling an iClicker from his jacket): iClicker?
Me (Raising an Eyebrow): Uh..?
Biker Guy: I'm supposed to be meeting a Patrick who wanted to buy an iClicker.
Me: Well, you're half right...

It was just so odd and so ironic that he was looking for someone with the same name as me and I happened to be just there at that time and pretty much one of the only people there that we stood stunned for a little while remarking on just how ironic it was.

Then I took off and made my way over to Ryon's to find out that Heroes was canceled in order to do the SNL Presidential bash. I stayed for a while to watch SNL with Sam and eat my Calzones. All of a sudden, Spencer comes in without saying anything to anyone, slams the front door, storms off to his room, and slams that door. It was such a nonsequitor that I really didn't know what to say other than to ask Ryon if that happened often.

Eventually, I made it home to the apartment where I found the living room light on, but Lynley and her car gone. (That's a fairly common occurance since she has two group projects all of the time.) On my computer I found a massive stack of mail for me and started going through it. A lot of it was election stuff that I threw away, but there happened to be four letters that stuck out, two of which had been postmarked with "Support Mental Health" in English and French.


Right away, I knew who the letters were from before I had even looked. Devin had asked for my mailing address a while ago, so I figured that it was from Steph and him. The only thing I couldn't figure out was why there were four of them.

I opened the letters (three from Steph, one from Devin) to find some incredibly artistic, but confusing letters to me, each with a gift inside. There was two anime cutouts from something or other, a stack of Canadian coins, a Pokéman card, and a check for ten dollars in total. The best that I can gather, Steph got a promotion at her job (she works tech support just like me, but in the private sector and for a lot more money. Stupid Canadians not requiring a college degree for awesome jobs.) and she was celebrating that and Samhain by sending me letters and trinkets.



I tell you, ending your day with letters from some of your best friends who live a whole country away is a really good way to end your day and your weird evening, even if they make it more weird.

Now maybe to have some cocoa and rest.

A Revolution Must be Had

I was talking with Scotty last night about our friends from back in Troy. After spending a while reminiscing about just what we missed about those friends, we quickly came to the same conclusion; there is something wrong with the world.

I've been feeling really frustrated ever since the beginning of this weekend and I couldn't exactly put my finger on why. All I knew was that I kept ending up sitting in corners, observing my friends, not really interacting or talking with anyone (and not really wanting to), and just feeling incredibly annoyed. After a while, I decided that I needed to be done with that, so I got drunk as fast as I could without vomiting.

After talking with Scotty, I think I figured out why. Most of my friends here are self absorbed, self interested, and too willing to get upset with each other over little things that don't matter. I won't name names, but its not necessary since it applies to roughly half of them and who does it doesn't really matter; the fact that a majority of my friends are like this is what matters.

Who am I really surrounding myself with? All of this idiotic infighting and self-contained drama is ridiculous. Back home, there was just as much shit that went down, probably even more since we dated within the group excessively. However, we never lingered on it as much as happens here. We never let it split us and divide us into little factions competing for turf.

I think that a major difference which helped a lot back home was that the group was not formed first. Instead, each one of us became friends with the others because we saw them all of the time in classes and in the hallways. We would introduce one person to another person, not one person to the entire group. This allowed for the creation of a much more real dynamic than the Metagamers could ever have. Our friendships were genuine and not formed over a common interest other than our genuine interest in each other. Instead of competing with each other for the attention of a few, we became like kin towards each other, bonded and backed by blood. This ridiculous competition for attention that the Carpé Nocten group has is retarded.

The other, more obvious, thing that the Family had over the Carpé Noctem group is the fact that its members were much more interested in the important things in life. Not a day went by where we didn't discuss philosophy, come up with some grand scheme, or talk about the problems of the world. Maybe this sounds hypocritical since I hate discussing politics with the Carpé Noctem group, but when politics are discussed by them, it is rarely ever a discussion. It's usually an argument and a dick slapping contest and nothing more. I hate it so much. Renny and I discuss politics quite a bit relatively, but that's because I feel like things actually get discussed. The finer details are brought up, both sides are critiqued, and I actually feel like I am thinking more.

Anyway, all of this discussion and thinking with Scotty led us to a conclusion: a revolution must be had. People must be brought above their petty arguments and differences and band together for the good of the world. Philosophy and other intellectual topics must be discussed. Hedonism and Egocentrism needs to be crushed. Stupidity cannot be tolerated and must need be punished. We are all of the same cut, the same flesh, and most act for one another, not ourselves.

Halloween Weekend

With this post, I now have exactly the same number of entries on this blog as I did on The Screaming Eye. Unfortunately, I don't even have a fraction of the readership here that it did, but that's to be expected since I rarely give out the URL to this blog. I really feel that because it is written with the concept of me being an outcast in mind, my inner thoughts shouldn't just be given away. But that's neither here nor there and definitely not what I intended to post about.

Actually, my intent to post was very vague. I don't have anything that I really wish to talk about too much. We had the halloween larp last night which was interesting. I wish I could share it with you by just opening my mind and letting the contents pour out because I want to share it with you, but I don't want to go through the effort of talking about it because it was so frustrating to me and my character.

Went over to the Narnia House for the first time Friday night for Jess's Halloween party. It was alright, I guess. I wasn't planning on really drinking too much, but it got to the point where I couldn't understand the people who were drunk and I felt like I constantly had a Colleen look on my face, so I decided to get as drunk as possible without getting sick. That turned out to be a better plan than I expected and I actually enjoyed the rest of an otherwise depressing evening.

I wish I had gotten more pictures of my Halloween costume, but due to a cop asking me to take it off the first time and it being really uncomfortable the second time, I didn't wear it much during Halloween. It's a shame since, although the costume was simple, I put a lot of effort and money into it. The idea behind the costume was lame, I admit it, but I liked it. I was portraying my backup character for the Larp, "Seth." He's a faceless clanless Vampire that whispers all of the time and has a shovel as his preferred weapon.

Next year, I'm going to try and come up with something really surreal so that when people ask me what I am, I can tell them and they will leave confused, but not through obscurity of reference. For example, I thought about getting some nice clothes and splattering them with fake blood and walking around like nothing is amiss then telling people that I am a Kindergarten teacher when people ask me what I am and giving no explaination other than that. Regardless, I want something extremely realistic so that the creep factor does not come from the fantasy element, but the realistic element. Too bad Halloween only comes once a year.

I have more things to post about, but I think I'll hold off until later. Right now, I have a lot on my mind. I also have some pictures from the different events that I need to upload.