Epic Post

coming on Monday. Epic essay on counter-culture, and emergin mainstream trends. Getting my BlackBook/Klosterman on.

This one won't be as long,

or as poorly written.

Oi, that last post was awful. I will go back and edit it some day, as to cleanse my good-horrifyingly bad ratio. My life has been relatively uneventful as of late. My days consist of work >> nap >> hangouts >> sleep. Unfailingly in that order.

I'm reading Tom Sawyer for the first time, and I'm so so in love with it. Twain, who is quickly becoming my favorite writer, captures the care-free spirit a ten-year old so well. It has helped me realize how trivial some things are, and I've stopped worrying about awful little things I used to toil over. Plus, Sawyer is such a brilliant trickster character, I can't help but idolize him. :3

I've been spending my lunches reading at Mavor's. It is quieter than the mall, by like a million, and there's way more q-t's around. The girl at Mavor's was periodically giving me a staff discount, but that seems to have stopped. Sigh, the injustice.

UPDATE: I got a coffee at Mavor's on my break and the girl TOTALLY gave me a discount. This is the kind of thing I spend most of my time thinking about.

All my friends are back from Europe

and I'm still as boring as ever.

I've been spending the long, sunny summer days locked up in the tower that is the Daniel J. Macdonald building. My job with DVA this summer is so much better than what I was doing last year. Any time a veteran died last summer, he/she showed up as a workitem on my computer screen. I had to sort all of the dead veterans and divy them up amongst my reapers, who then sorted out the poor person's finances. As cool and Dead Like Me-ish that sounds, it was never exactly an upbeat job. This year I'm writing letters to veterans that say, "hey, it sucks you can't hear very much, so here's 15,000$ to help you through the pain!" It's a lot more positive, and as much as it sucks to read their medical sheets to see what effects their service had on them, it is so much better than dealing with deadies.

I still haven't got my bike in order, and my pipedream of biking straight from work to my cottage in Keppoch whenever the weather gets warmed is getting further and further away.

Twenty has been surprisingly eventful, it seems like this will be a fun year. And I feel like I should probably touch on the car crash. About a week after my last post, during my final few days as a nineteen year old, I was driving home from Montague at one in the morning and dozed off at the wheel. Coming into "the Buster's turn," a notorious curve if there ever was one, I regained my wits. I was going too fast though, and my car started to drift across the road as I went through the turn. Panicing, I tried to toggle the wheel in the opposite direction that I was turning to try and regain control. The tail end of my car whipped around and all of a sudden my car was doing 360's across the highway. I thought I was a gone-r. The tail end of the car slammed into the ditch and I was tossed around on the inside like a ragdoll. I hit my head on the roof of the car, and blacked out slightly for a few seconds. Opening my eyes, the passenger side of the car was completely smashed. Undoing my seatbelt, and after a minute of cursing and hysteria, I called my mom and told her what happened. She came and picked me up, and every person in every car and every truck, except one, stopped to see if I was okay. It was really touching, and it restored my faith in the generosity and compassion of others. The car was a write-off, and now the majority of my earnings this summer are going towards my Aunt's new Toyota Matrix.

I managed to escape the crash almost completely unscathed. A sprained finger, a few bruises, and a light bit of whiplash is pretty damned lucky, all things considered. Besides that, my life has been filled with booze, girls, Settlers, Jumbo Video, and so little sleep. I am actually going to try and update this more often. That just killed a half hour of my morning, I just got paid to write this!

All my friends are going to Europe,

so I decided to start a blog.

No seriously though, a huge chunk of my friends are going to Europe at different times over the next week. They're going to be gone for a whole month, which at first I thought would be okay. A month isn't that long, it's no big deal. But it didn't hit me until last night when we were saying goodbye to James that a month is a super long time, and they won't even have time to go on msn or anything. They are all going to be off jumping from train to train, eating delicious things I can't pronounce, and seeing amazing things in a land I can only dream of. I'll be in my cubicle, at DVA. All day.

They will be practically be extinct for the entire month of May, the month of my BIRTHDAY. Some friends they are. Although hopefully this means they'll forget that I'm turning twenty. I'm going to be so OLD. I feel like responsibility is going to jump me at midnight and start beating me up. I tend to fear the future, so every year at my birthday I realize that I'm another year older and start freaking out more than often. I don't want to grow up. Growing up sucks. No one ever has fun when they're grown up.

I don't want to be twenty.

Bye guys :(

Revamp v. 3.0

I'll probably change the title back, but for now that's good.
If anyone can tell me how to get rid of the indent, that would be amazing.

We're going to the Frosty Treat soon, and I'm really excited. I just finished watching an insane basketball game that went to two overtimes. So intense. Now I'm watching old old old UFC fights, and waiting for word on conveys to Frosty Treat.

My life has been pretty great lately. I start at DVA tomorrow, and that's just going to suck a whole lot. Thankfully I have books, and my iPod. I'm going to start ripping DVDs onto my iPod, because I have way too much stuff that I have to watch this summer.

Any suggestions for colors? I have a picture in mind for the heading, but I need to edit it together first. Anyways, this is going to be updated regularly while I'm at work.

Inauguration Live Blog!

So its 12:42 and we're just getting on our way. I've already polished off a thing of walking nachos. My aunt and I are lounging in my living room. This is the Semantic's officially-inaugurated liveblog. Let's get this thing under way!

12:42: People are being taken to their seats. There's Biden and Cheney, who is in a wheelchair oddly enough. The announcer tells us its from, "when he was moving boxes while moving into his new home." Right. And there's Nancy Pelosi, who is really over with this crowd. She just got a huge ovation.

12:43: "And I am proud to introduce, Barack H. Obama!" It was probably a good call leaving out the Hussein. The man is shaking every hand he can. And he takes his seat... everyone holds their breath!

12:44: Obama! Obama! Obama! First Obama chant of the broadcast.

12:46: I can't be the only person who thinks Michelle Obama is a babe. Right?

12:47: So many references to MLK. Obama should start his speech with, "Four score and seven years ago, my ancestors had a dream!"

12:52: All this christian prayer must be a little weird considering Obama's a muslim and all... I wonder how he feels about it. (...don't hit me)

12:54: Jesus, Aretha! We know you can sing, but what the HELL is on your head?! That thing looks like the entrance to a christmas present casino. Also, would it kill you to skip dessert once in a while?

12:55: ringringringring! let it- let it- let it- let it- let it- let it- let it- let it- riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing! Sing it, Aretha!

12:57: I think we're running slightly behind. Obama is officially the new president in three minutes and Biden is still on stage. Get the man out here!

12:58: Hehehe "faithfully discharge the duties"

1:00: And we officially have a new president. They haven't actually sworn him in or anything yet. Yo-Yo-Ma is doing his thing on the cello. It's a really depressing song, you'd think they'd pick something a little more upbeat. Let's get those marching bands back, or where'd Stevie Wonder go? Wouldn't Stevie Wonder rule right now?

1:03: A stool?!? Hahahaha. I thought he was a good basketball player. How is he so short?

1:05: Holy crap. This is insane. I can't even handle it. I've already got gnarly goosebumps already. Ahhh! Those cannons are making me way too nervous.

1:10: Those are some big promises he just made. Like, holy smokes. Education, health care, and the economy: through the first thirty seconds of his speech and he's already promised to fix all of them. "America, you're all too dumb!" But we will overcome!"

1:12: kbrb, he's talking.

4:00 Okay, so after he finished talking and the benediction finished, I had a nap.

It would have been cool if Wilco or Jay-Z got to play the inauguration. He's admitted to being a fan of both: Wilco used to play fundraisers for him all the time back when he was still Senator Obama, and there were huge rumors that Jay-Z was begging and pleading for that spot. Wouldn't it have been cool if he played "Dirt of Your Shoulder" right before the swearing in? Or what about "99 problems, but my pres ain't one"? Jay-Z is clever like that.

Yo-yo Ma is cool and all (see: safe for white people), but you know that Obama is cooler than he's allowed to be.

But that was pretty fun while it lasted, wasn't it?! No one got shot, his speech ruled, and his new limo is fly as hell. I would write a big, slobbery "omg Obama, I luuurv you" piece, but there's probably way too much of that going around anyways. Ciao!

I dare you to write in my Honesty Box

I spend a lot of time on Facebook. Its an addiction, like crack or heroin. I have a problem. I need my fix, and I'll break promises and friendships to get it. I should probably go to meetings or something. I can figure out who wrote in my Honesty Box by cross referencing the writing style to who I think it is, and then checking the time stamps of the Honesty Box message and the other Facebook activity of my suspects. I probably watch too many detective shows, but that's for a different time and place. The point is, I have a problem.

Like crack and heroin, my addiction is beginning to take a toll on my social life. Don't worry, it isn't because I'm selling myself for friend requests or wall-posts. It's because I'm starting to know people before I even meet them.

I went to Dal last semester**, so, you know, I didn't live here. Every time I looked through my friends' photo albums, there would be new faces that I was completely unfamiliar with. So, being a curious person by nature, I would click on their profile if I could. Who are these new people? Are they good enough for my friends? I would ask someone on MSN who they are, what they're like, where they came from, who has crushes on them, etc. etc. But then I'd start asking myself things like, "Am I being replaced? Is there still room for me when I get home? Will people even remember me?" Shut up, Connor, people love you.

Back to my problem. Once I came home from school, I was confronted with actually having to meet these people. But I already knew them? I knew their names, where they're from, what people find annoying about them. Its like we'd already met. I made the mistake of saying to one of them, "Oh hey, I recognize you from Facebook." That was a bad idea. Saying, "I know you from the internet," to someone is the creepiest thing you can possibly do. It doesn't matter how innocently you meant for it to be. "But you're in all of my friends photo albums!?" Doesn't matter. You can't win. That person is going to look at you like you farted for the rest of the night.

I quickly learned that the best thing to do is play dumb. Act like you've never heard that person's name before. "Hm, you're who? I've never heard of you ever before! You hang out with my friends all the time now?! This is news! Call the Panther Post!" And I can continue to live with my addiction in peace. I think I've met everyone. But its not like I'd actually tell you that. I've never met you before in my life. You're who?


**Say hi to me on campus, please. I'm new and don't know where I'm going. Directions are appreciated.