Random Ramblings

Things I Miss About College

2010-12-01T02:53:00.004-06:00

1. People to hang out with. For a while, I told myself that I missed "having friends," but that's not the right way of putting it. I do have friends. They're just in Austin. Or New Mexico. Or Washington D.C. Or Colorado. Or Lubbock. Or even downtown, maybe 45 minutes away, where I really just don't feel like driving sometimes. Facebook and texting don't cut it sometimes. I wouldn't move back into a dorm if you paid me, but I do miss walking through my neighbor's propped-open door on the way to the bathroom and leaving two hours later.

2. Places to hang out. There's the Starbucks on 407, the Starbucks in the Barnes and Noble (where I work now, btw), and...that's it. Everything else in a ten-mile radius is restaurants and retail shops. Last night, I was talking to a friend I made at work (not to contradict #1), and we decided that since neither of us was hungry, we'd just get together another time. Also, everything closes at or before 10:00 p.m.

3. Privacy. Or maybe "independence" is a better word for it. My parents like to know where I am and vaguely what I'm doing every time I leave the house. It sounds overprotective, but really, the alternative is me just walking out the door without saying a word. With a roommate, you can say "I'll be back" and take off without anything being made of it. With parents, it's just a different dynamic - "Where are you going?" is as natural to them as saying "Good morning," even if they're just being conversational about it. I miss feeling free to do my own thing, I guess.

4. Purpose. I've said it before, I'll say it again, because I still believe it - this is the first year of my life that hasn't been planned out for me since the day I was born. Elementary school, middle school, high school, college...??? A college degree was my ultimate goal for about sixteen years, and now that I've got it, I feel like I'm living day to day. I need something to look forward to, something to work toward. I'm tired of just surviving.

Hmm

2010-10-20T16:32:00.002-05:00

maybe we're at a point where work isn't going to make us happy. i agree with what you said about following your dreams just not making sense after a while - it's hard enough to find any job right now, let alone one that you genuinely want to do. i doubt many people can boast that, anyway. i've been feeling kinda low lately, and i've been attributing it all to unemployment. it's true that not having anything to do all day gets old, but it's not like picking up a minimum-wage job around town or, God forbid, a full-time position is gonna fix everything. seems like all we can do is find a way to make some money and then find fulfillment somewhere else. i've been working on figuring out how to do that lately.

How David Wong Sees The World

2010-10-18T21:59:00.006-05:00

David Wong is the editor of Cracked.com and the author of the horror-comedy novel John Dies at the End. His Cracked articles are a little more philosophical than their average fare; deliberately or not, they reveal a lot about how he sees the world. His views are pretty interesting - they synthesize into a pretty cohesive whole more than I agree with them, but I'm starting to agree with them more than I'd admit to myself. You'll see what I mean.

7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable

http://www.cracked.com/article_15231_7-reasons-21st-century-making-you-miserable.html

Sample Quote:
"An insult is just someone who hates you making a noise to indicate their hatred. A barking dog. Criticism is someone trying to help you, by telling you something about yourself that you were a little too comfortable not knowing. Tragically, there are now a whole lot of people who never have those conversations. The interventions, the brutal honesty, the, "you know, everybody's pissed off because of what you said last night, but nobody wants to say anything because they're afraid of you," sort of conversations...E-mail and texting are awesome tools for avoiding that level of honesty."

The 10 Most Important Things They Didn't Teach You In School

http://www.cracked.com/article_18611_the-10-most-important-things-they-didnt-teach-you-in-school.html

Sample Quote:
"Some of you guys who grew up on The Matrix still fantasize about beating the shit out of a street full of thugs in a fight that looks like a choreographed dance. Oh, there are guys out there capable of kicking ass. They're called criminals. They're good at fighting because they have poor impulse control and anger management, and thus are constantly getting into fights. If you, on the other hand, are going to be civilized and successful parents and homeowners and taxpayers, the odds are overwhelming you will not ever be good at fighting."

How 'The Karate Kid' Ruined The Modern World

http://www.cracked.com/article_18544_how-the-karate-kid-ruined-modern-world.html

Sample Quote:
"We have a vague idea in our head of the 'price' of certain accomplishments, how difficult it should be to get a degree, or succeed at a job, or stay in shape, or raise a kid, or build a house. And that vague idea is almost always catastrophically wrong."

5 Reasons The Future Will Be Ruled By B.S.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-be-ruled-by-b.s..html

Sample Quote:
"Next to my water is a green bottle of Excedrin. Sure, the generic store brand is identical right down to the molecule, but I paid twice as much for the name brand because this is Excedrin here. The Headache Medicine. It's sitting on top of a statement from the bank showing where they automatically deducted my mortgage payment... for a $5.00 'transaction fee.'"

Breakthrough?

2010-10-12T03:06:00.003-05:00

I feel like it's okay to complain about being unemployed as long as you're detached about it. Everyone needs to blow off steam once in a while. Students bitch about how much homework they have; people in the workforce spend Friday nights drinking beer and trading bad-boss stories. It's natural. Likewise, I can tell a story about how I've followed up on my Tom-Thumb-Starbucks-kiosk application six times and have yet to meet the hiring manager, and as long as it's a funny story, no harm no foul. But when I start getting bent out of shape about it — when a student really gets pissed that he has to do all this goddamn studying, or when an employee genuinely resents having to show up at 9:00 every morning — that's a line that's hard to drift back across.

I'm getting bitter. I'm becoming a person that I don't necessarily like. In college, I finally came into my own as a person - I developed this persona of quiet, laid-back confidence. And even if it was an act sometimes, I liked being that guy. My friends liked that guy. Even a couple girls liked that guy. But now, being home, not having anyone to talk to or hang out with, not having anything to do or anywhere to go all day, I'm just getting...bitter.

I don't know how to come back from it. I'm trying to find ways to stay positive, but no dice so far. I'm afraid that I might be pushing away the friends that I do have - I've been very negative lately, and not in the I'm-just-having-a-bad-day way. I feel like I'm a downer to be around and to talk to. And seeing how I'm trying to make friends around here, that's not necessarily the best way to go about it.

Scenario

2010-10-11T03:03:00.008-05:00

Picture this.

You're at a restaurant. You've just sat down, you haven't even gotten your water yet, when you spot a girl on the other side of the room. Now, you've never believed in love at first sight. Maybe you're tired. Maybe you're stressed from work. Maybe the last twenty minutes of "You've Got Mail" that you caught on cable last night pushed your brain past the limit of how much bullshit the media can pump in before it starts believing in it a little. But you see this girl, and in the snap of a finger, you just know she's supposed to be an important part of your life.

Problem is, she's leaving - she's already halfway to the door, in fact. Without conscious thought you stand up to intercept her. "Hi," you say.

"Hi," she says back. She's confused but not scared or irritated. You offer your name, she tells you hers. Then, she says, "What can I do for you?"

Only now do you realize how absurd what you're trying to do really is. It makes sense in your head, but you can't bring yourself to say it out loud. What you manage is, "I--I just saw you. From over there, that's my table. I saw you leaving, and--can I buy you a cup of coffee sometime?"

She smiles. Looks down. Looks back up at you. "Are you for real?"

"I think so."

A pause. You haven't come off as aggressive, threatening, or cocky, so a flat-out "no" would seem a little harsh. On the other hand, she's literally been aware of your existence on this planet for less than twenty seconds. You watch these thoughts play out on her face like a movie. She smiles again, but it's a different smile. "Sell yourself," she says.

For a second you think she's talking about money. "I'm sorry?"

"Sell yourself to me. Like an elevator pitch. You want to get coffee with me. I don't know why, but you do. But you haven't given me a reason to want to get coffee with you yet." She looks you in the eye. "Convince me you're someone I want to know. You've got sixty seconds. Go."

What do you say?

Journalism

2010-03-23T15:04:00.003-06:00

I'm getting really interested in investigative journalism lately? I read a lot online over the break about Edward R. Murrow, See It Now, how he called McCarthy out on all his bullshit, etc., even listened to some of his old WWII radio broadcasts. Today, on a whim between classes, I checked out "All the President's Men" (Woodward and Bernstein's book about Watergate) and am about 50 pages into it already. Cool stuff.

Let's get personal

2010-03-11T02:54:00.002-06:00

I didn't get into ACE, just like I suspected.

The thing is, though, despite what I said before--I really thought I had a shot. I thought there was no way in hell they'd even give me an interview, and they did. It didn't go great, but I thought it went well enough that I might still have been able to pull it off. I started thinking about everything I've done well - Plan II, my GPA, my application essays, the RA thing, etc., and I dared to believe that maybe I wasn't giving myself enough credit. It wasn't a sure thing, by any means, but I really thought I had a 50/50 shot at getting in.

Once again, I've come up just short - I made it two rounds into TFA before they cut me, and I reached the final stage of ACE, too. Getting rejected outright might have been easier on me.

There's more to this story, though. Notre Dame was my top choice for undergrad - it was the first college I visited during junior year of high school, and I fell in love with the campus and the atmosphere. Two of my really good friends (Brian and Jamie) went there, and it would have been great to follow in their footsteps. I applied early acceptance, got deferred, and then got rejected on April 1st.

I guess I saw ACE as my second chance, the possibility of redemption. I visited Katherine up there in January and got taken in all over again. People are just friendlier up there than they are at UT. Maybe it's something in the water. Walking around, I really could have seen myself as a student there. I got excited again.

When I got the e-mail this afternoon, I cried for the first time in seven years. I got choked up when I was saying goodbye to my mom freshman year, and I teared up at my cousin's wedding, but I haven't had a good cry since freshman year of high school. I was sitting in the Quad studying for my midterm tomorrow morning (oh yeah...), checking my e-mail on my iPhone every two minutes, and when it came, I started shaking so bad I spilled my coffee. It's been a stressful couple weeks, so maybe it was coming anyway, but I'd forgotten how good it feels to just sob. I made it back to my apartment before that started happening, at least.

So, yeah. Post-graduation plans are back to square one.

The Future

2010-02-03T02:34:00.002-06:00

Still don't know what I'm doing in three months, but I know what I'm not doing. Teach For America didn't offer me a final interview. ACE still hasn't gotten back to me, but I don't have high hopes for that one anymore. I took the GRE in September, never got my results, called, still didn't get them, called again, still didn't get them. I ended up sending my scores up to Notre Dame without ever having seen them. Finally got them in the mail yesterday, and they're--abysmal. The ACE office is probably gonna laugh and toss my application in the trash. I can't even blame 'em.

I'm more okay with these developments than I thought I'd be. Knowing that I tried to help save the world is just as morally uplifting as spending two years doing it.

I feel like I've spent my entire life with people just a little bit better than me. As great a school as Cistercian is, I was in the bottom half of my class for six years. I'm doing okay at UT, but because I'm in Plan II, the "elite" are still the only people I know - they're smarter than I am, they write better than I do, they're cleverer than I am. Not by a lot, but by enough for it to matter.

That's why I like copy editing so much, I think. I KNOW grammar. It's my forte, it's what I'm good at. People ask me questions and I shoot the answer back without looking up from the Wikipedia article I'm reading. I can plow through eight RIM stories in an hour, and when I'm done, you can scriptset that shit. I make mistakes, sure, but 99% of them come from carelessness, not ignorance. The confidence I feel when I'm adding commas and em dashes and restructuring sentences is something I haven't felt in a long time, if ever.

So--that's what I want to do with my life. Not copy editing, per se, but something where I'm not second-guessing myself on a daily basis. TFA and ACE take the best of the best, and even if I eke my way in, it'll just be more of the same. I'll still be busting my ass to break into the middle of the pack while the guy in front exudes apathetic arrogance and talks about how EASY everything is.

I guess I just want to be that guy. For once.

WTF

2010-01-08T03:01:00.000-06:00

Paranormal Activity is the scariest fucking movie I've ever seen.

Back in touch

2009-12-28T23:49:00.001-06:00

I love voicemails that start with "I hope this is still your number."

Salinger

2009-12-26T01:10:00.003-06:00

I went through my J.D. Salinger phase junior and senior year of high school. I liked Franny and Zooey way better than Catcher in the Rye, though, and Nine Stories best of all. I even wrote a ten-page research paper on the Glass family (whose names I can still rattle off - Les, Bessie, Seymour, Buddy, Boo Boo, Walt, Waker, Zooey, Franny).

The best part about coming home is grabbing a book at random off the shelf in my room, opening it to a similarly random page, and plowing in. I can do that for hours, and I often do. I reread a couple of the stories from Nine Stories last night. I enjoyed them well enough. I still think Salinger's a good author, but he's not my favorite anymore. Couldn't tell you why; he's just not.

His dedications still crack me up, though. Here's the one to Franny and Zooey:

"As nearly as possible in the spirit of Matthew Salinger, age one, urging a luncheon companion to accept a cool lima bean, I urge my editor, mentor and (heaven help him) closest friend, William Shawn, genus domus of The New Yorker, lover of the long shot, protector of the unprolific, defender of the hopelessly flamboyant, most unreasonably modest of born great artist-editors, to accept this pretty skimpy-looking book."

And here's the one to Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction:

"If there is an amateur reader still left in the world--or anybody who just reads and runs--I ask him or her, with untellable affection and gratitude, to split the dedication of this book four ways with my wife and children."

Status

2009-12-23T23:02:00.003-06:00

Updating your Facebook status is the quintessential path to instant gratification. Feeling lonely? Send a quote, an inside joke, an offhand observation, or a gripe out into the void, and nine times out of ten, you'll get a couple "likes" and a sympathetic comment or two within an hour. It doesn't matter that they're usually from people who'd forgotten you exist until it popped up in their minifeed. It's human contact, it's validation, and sometimes, that's all you wanted.

Winter Break '09: To-do list

2009-12-22T16:32:00.004-06:00

To-do list for Winter Break '09:

-Apply to Teach for America. Deadline is January 8th, so I still have some time.

-Apply to ACE. The Alliance for Catholic Education is basically like TFA, except it's run through Notre Dame. It's a two-year commitment where you're teaching in Catholic schools during the year and taking classes to get a Master's in education over the summer. My mom found out about it when she was dropping Katherine off at college in August and has been pushing it ever since. It's a good deal and all, probably the better of the two, but I'm applying more to placate her than because it's what I really want to do. Eight years of Catholic school was enough, thanks.

-Finish the first draft of my thesis. We were supposed to have all sixty pages done by the end of the first semester, but I told my supervisor around mid-October that that just wasn't gonna happen. He laughed and said to do as much as I could. I submitted a fifteen-page story and a twenty-page story, but the second one is a complete do-over that I wrote in 36 hours so I'd have something to turn in. Coming up with ideas, brainstorming in my Moleskine, jotting down outlines are easy. Writing is the hard part. I have to learn to to silence my inner editor, to write crap knowing that it's crap, to get quantity down on paper and worry about turning it into quality later.

-Set up a move-in date / cable / electricity for my new apartment. Just a few phone calls I have to make. I'm moving out of Jefferson West into my own place at 37th & Speedway next semester, and that's all I care to say about that on the Internet.

-Hang out with Danny, Emily, Michelle, and others TBD. Now that I'm back in town for good, I can start making plans with people. Danny and Em are no-brainers; we keep missing each other when they visit Austin. And now that all but the closest of high-school relationships have faded out, I think we're at the point where "catching up" is enough of a reason to get together with anyone we ever knew, regardless of how close we were or how long it's been.

-Read. Just finished a book of short stories by Breece D'J Pancake and loved it. A lot. Colum McCann's new book is next. Ham on Rye, by Charles Bukowski, is after that. I like how I can read for fun as much as I want and chalk it up as thesis research.

-Watch movies. I've been keeping a list of movies I learned about in my film history class (shudder, long story for another day) all semester, and now it's time to rent 'em one by one and enjoy. A lot of it (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, for example, or Annie Hall) is stuff I'm kinda embarrassed to have not seen yet.

-Apply to grad school. Oh, yeah, that. It's a back-up option.

Bunny

2009-11-29T02:33:00.002-06:00

At home in Dallas for the night. Saw Bunny on the top of my bookcase and picked him up. Bunny and I were inseparable from before I started remembering things till longer after that than I'd care to admit. Took a second to wonder how things have gotten so complicated since losing him was the worst thing in the world and finding him again was the greatest.

Life

2009-11-16T11:04:00.003-06:00

The past few days have been pretty representative of my life as a whole lately, for better or worse. Mostly worse, to be honest with you.

Skipped all my classes on Thursday. Classes, studying, tests, grades just aren't on my radar as much as they've been for as long as I can remember. Call it sleep deprivation, apathy, senioritis, whatever you want. I'm not failing anything, not even close, but I just can't bring myself to care like I used to. Maybe it's a good thing I'm taking a year or two off before grad school, if I even decide to take that route at all.

Got a text from my roommate Thursday night that they wanted to throw a bachelor party for one of their friends. I said it was fine with me, went home, packed a bag, and spent the night on Michael's couch. Pretty good night, too - watched Dark Knight on TV, went to Whataburger afterward. I feel like that's the kind of night I should be having a lot more often as a college senior, instead of locking myself in my room and plugging in my iPod to block out the stonerbabble from the living room. Got home Friday morning (well, afternoon) to find a hole kicked through the living room wall. About par for the course.

Friday night - found out this girl I've been talking with over the last couple weeks has a boyfriend. And this is after I spent 5 of my last 20 dine-in dollars on orange juice and soup because she was sick. That's the worst part.

Texan party Friday night was fun. Slept till three the next day. Not hungover, that's just a usual Saturday. Rest of the day--nothing exciting. Caught up with Lauren on Facebook chat and then the phone for a while. Also called Sean for the first time since he moved back to New Mexico. I didn't realize how much I'd taken hanging out with him for granted until he left. We talked for a good hour and a half while I wandered around West Campus. He's doing well enough, it seems like, so good for him. Got back to my place, tried to get together with a few different people, but no one was up for anything. I ended up going to Arab with Michael, though, which was a nice surprise. Not that I hung out with Michael, or that we went to Arab, just that plans fell into my lap for a change.

Sunday, up at 4, which is late even for me. Went to 7-11 for groceries. I need a car in the worst way. Work from 6-3. Hanging out with Stephen and Olivia on Sunday nights and the gang on Wednesday nights is starting to be the highlight of my social life, and that's really, really sad. I thought junior year was rough when everyone moved out of the dorm, but this year, everyone's moved out of Austin. Sean's in New Mexico, Danny's in Dallas, Emily's in Lubbock, Joe's in Houston, Paddy's in Florida. I mean, I saw this coming and all, but still. Too many work friends, class friends, Facebook friends. Not enough friend friends. Home at 3, couldn't sleep till 5, work at 8.

Happy Monday.

One of those nights

2009-10-23T10:57:00.004-05:00

Class: 9:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
Copy editing: 5:00 p.m. - 1:30 a.m. (ish)
Impromptu rooftop party on the roof of Walter Webb Hall, complete with accordion player: 1:30 a.m. - 3:00 a.m.
Kerbey Lane, party of 11, $3 migas: 3:30 a.m. - 5:30 a.m.
Crashing on one of the way-too-short couches in the Carothers lobby: 5:30 a.m. - 7:55 a.m.
Desk shift: 8:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon
Sleep: 12:10 p.m. - ???

Totally worth it.

Things I'm Excited About

2009-10-07T08:40:00.002-05:00

Too much negativity lately. It's all I see in the news, in Daily Texan comment feeds, on Facebook statuses, just a constant barrage of bitching and criticism. The sheer volume of it just kills your spirit after a while. It's been a rough semester so far for multiple, unrelated reasons, but that doesn't mean I get to wallow in self-pity and subject others to it on a daily basis. I'm gonna change my tone for a minute and list things I'm excited about; maybe that'll help me start off the day right, for a change.

--Where the Wild Things Are opens this Friday. Trailer was awesome. Spike Jonze seems to know what he's doing with this one.
--A Serious Man - new Coen Brothers movie. I hear it's a downer, but they could take a shit on celluloid and I'd still pay nine bucks to watch it.
--The Office - Jim and Pam are getting married this Thursday. I'm aware they aren't real people, and I'm equally aware that it's not a real wedding. Really. I am. That doesn't stop me from pumping my fists and drumming on the nearest surface every time the promo comes on (gotta link this one - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnU9566Tfgo). Bottom line, this payoff's been five years in the making.
--weekend in Chicago - my dad and his twin brother are turning fifty on the 26th, so we're doing a big thing up in Chicago on the weekend of the 16th-18th to celebrate. Hanging out with the Jones side of the family is always a blast. In Austin, I'm a pseudo-adult. There, I'm just another cousin (that's a comforting regression, btw).
--my new job in the Quad - speaking of comforting regression, I picked up a CA job in the Quad eight hours a week. Being here is as close to feeling at home as I'm gonna find outside of Dallas.

I feel a little better already?

Conundrum

2009-10-05T20:24:00.003-05:00

Dunno what's worse: thinking you're happy and later realizing you weren't (or at least shouldn't have been), or thinking at the time you were going through a rough patch and later considering that rough patch to be one of your better times. It's a shitty feeling either way.

Sending Katherine off to college at the end of the summer made me nostalgic for freshman year. Then I realized that I wouldn't do my freshman year on B2 over again if you paid me and that I just miss the general idea of freshman year of college.

Independence

2009-08-10T01:35:00.004-05:00

I didn't realize how much I've gotten used to doing stuff on my own until moving back home. I had my own room in the dorms last year, from August to May, and that was fun, if a tad lonely at times. Mostly on weeknights and during the daytime on weekends. Lots of reading, lots of sudoku, lots of Facebook. Too much Facebook, probably. It was the same this summer. I lived with Sean, Joe, and Pad, but Joe and Pad worked all day and I worked at night, so we didn't cross paths as often as you'd think. Besides, whenever we were all in the apartment, we all just kind of let each other be. We all kinda did our own thing, sleep-wise, entertainment-wise, food-wise. We didn't force our presences on each other too often, if that makes sense.

I'm kind of used to being left alone, as sad as that sounds. I don't mind spending a Wednesday night making headway in a good book or a Friday night going to a movie by myself (like I did last Friday - (500) Days of Summer was phenomenal). If I end up hanging out with other people along the way, that's great, but I've stopped believing that that's what I have to do to be happy. It's too much effort, making plans night after night after night just to avoid being alone. Or maybe I've just gotten used to it after years of practice.

But being home, I can't do my own thing like I'm used to. I've gotten accustomed to never being bothered, so when I get interrupted every ten minutes to 'come look at this thoughtful newspaper article' or 'meet the new neighbor's fiance,' it just grates on me after a while. I know that part of coming home is having every aspect of your life called into question ("Do you always sleep this late?"), but it's such a 180 from the past year of my life that I feel on edge all the time. They seem to just want me to be there, to hang around downstairs and be around them. And I know they're my parents, and they love me, and I love them, and all that, but I'm a creature of solitude. It's less stressful.

Meh, whatever. I'm leaving a week from tomorrow. I can power through till then.

From the archives.

2009-08-03T21:06:00.005-05:00

Wrote this sophomore year of high school. Reading it now is weird, I can tell you that. What a difference five years makes. I want to either give my old self a hug or punch him in the face. Still a good bit of writing, though, I think.

Once, there was this kid. He wasn't really an unhappy kid, but sometimes things didn't go his way. He has a lot of people that know him, less that he calls friends, and even less that he calls good friends. He's not ignored or anything, he's not some kind of pariah. But whenever there's a party or some friends of his are getting together, for some reason they never call him to join in.

So here's this kid, living day by day, going to school, doing his homework, doing extracurriculars. He's not unhappy, again, but he's not really, truly happy. He knows that what would make him happy aren't good grades, or a scholarship to some college, but a group of really close friends that would just get him. Not a bunch of acquaintances that he's on good terms with, but people that he wouldn't hesitate for a second to call at 2 a.m. and ask some inane philosophical question. People who would drop pre-existing plans to hang out with him on a Saturday night. People who this usually quiet kid can actually talk around, because he knows that even if he says something stupid, he won't get made fun of and shut out for it.

One day, this kid goes to a Chinese restaurant. He gets a fortune cookie and opens it up. His fortune says, "You have the ability to touch the lives of many other people." Now, this really makes the kid think. He realizes that even if he doesn't have perfect happiness in his life right now, his mere presence might be making other people's lives a little bit better. The girl he comforts online when she needs some advice about her boyfriend. The guy who he helps with math homework during lunch. Being the “nice guy,” the dependable one, who's always willing to lend a hand. The kid realizes that maybe he's not destined to find happiness, true love, best friends. But maybe he's a catalyst. Maybe his purpose here on earth (and we all have one, I’m sure) is to make the lives of the people he knows better. In little ways, like holding a door, or maybe in big ways, like reconciling two fighting friends. Isn't that better, the kid ponders? Isn't it nice to know that you're out there doing good for people you love? That satisfaction of knowing that you did a good deed, as opposed to the different kind of satisfaction of knowing that your own life is complete?

Anyway, now this kid keeps that fortune in his wallet. He looks at it once in awhile to remind himself that his life isn't wasted. Even though he's got problems of his own, his mere existence makes peoples' lives better. And that makes him feel better for a while.

Quote

2009-07-31T11:33:00.003-05:00

Every once in a while, something comes along right when you need to hear it the most. That's how it was for me with JD's final monologue in his last episode of Scrubs. I'd provide some kind of commentary on it, but it's best to just read it for yourself.

JD: Endings are never easy. I always build them up so much in my head they can't possibly live up to my expectations, and I end up disappointed. I don't even know why it matters to me so much how things end here. I think it's because we all want to believe that what we do is very important, that people hang on to our every word, that they care what we think. The truth is, you should consider yourself lucky if you even occasionally get to make someone, anyone, feel a little better.

...yeah.

Work

2009-07-30T03:23:00.002-05:00

Finished my summer employment with The Daily Texan. It didn't pay well, but man, did I have fun every night. Everyone that worked there was really chill, and with all the downtime we had waiting for articles to come in and pages to get designed, there was plenty of time to jack around. Formed plenty of friendships that I hope won't die over the coming semester. There's no point in asking work friends if they want to hang out outside of work, because you see them often enough as it is. I feel a certain kinship even with people I didn't talk to very often. Just the fact that we sat next to each other six hours a day, three days a week, seems like enough to form some kind of bond. Coming in to work didn't even seem like work, to be honest, as cheesy as that sounds.

Last night was my last shift, and when the time came to pack up my stuff around 12:45 a.m., I didn't want to leave. It's not cool to make a big deal out of saying goodbye, so I just told everyone that I'd see them around and pushed my way out the door. Not that we had anything in particular to reminisce about or nostalgicize on, but still. I wanted to make it a bigger moment but didn't because it wasn't the right crowd.

I may or may not come back in the fall. I'm looking at getting a job at Starbucks or something, just so I can pull in a decent paycheck to keep myself afloat. I'm starting to think like an adult. It scares me a little.

But yeah. My job at the Texan was the sole bright spot in this otherwise craphole of a summer. Well, it wasn't terrible, I guess. Just...underwhelming.

Shoutouts to Ben, Austen, Thu, Olivia, Nolan, Lauren, and Priya. Hope to see you guys around in the fall. It's been a pleasure.

Summertime, and the wind is blowing outside

2009-05-29T03:36:00.000-05:00

For the first time in a long time, I’m not just content. I’m—I’m optimistic. I don’t think I’ve looked forward to summer vacation this much since elementary school, back when summer still meant more fun instead of just less work. I remember looking forward to the neighborhood pools opening up, sleepovers at friends’ houses, day-long explorations of the woods behind my school’s soccer field, nighttime games of flashlight tag with the neighbors. In the same vein, I’m relieved that junior year and the RA gig are over with, but more than that, I’m legitimately excited about everything the next few months have to offer. I feel like I'm at the beginning of something, not the end.

I’m at home in Dallas right now, which is always great in small doses. I’m watching movies, reading for fun, catching up with the family, and making plans with a select few high school friends (because by now, other than that, what’s the point?). My bed is really, really comfortable; I’d almost forgotten. Next Wednesday, we’re heading up to Chicago for my cousin Eric’s wedding. I’m one of the groomsmen, so I’m just plain excited about getting to look all fancy in a tuxedo. Beyond that, though, Jones family get-togethers are always badass, on general principle. To people who don’t get me – spend ten minutes with this group, and you’ll understand why I am the way I am, and why I wouldn’t have it any other way. Cheesy, yes. Genuine, of course.

Two days after the wedding, I’m moving down to Austin. I’m staying with Sean, Joe, and Pad for the summer – anything’s better than the dorms, but this is a situation that I’m actually excited about, instead of one I can just live with (ba dum ching!). I’ve known all three of them since day one of freshman year, so I get the feeling that the four of us are going to have some good times together. A lot of my other friends are in Austin for the summer, as well. We’re finally all at the age (most of us incoming seniors, a few newly graduated, a few juniors) where we’re kind of expected to get jobs and apartments and to fend for ourselves. I’m cautiously optimistic that my birthday won’t suck this year, for a change. Plenty of people to hang out with, and plenty of time for it.

I have a job downtown at a nonprofit called the Fund for the Public Interest. I don’t know much about it, other than that I’ll be soliciting people for money and getting paid pretty well to do so. It’s a nine-to-five, meaning that I'm earning a constant and decent paycheck for the first time in my life. I do have rent to pay, after all. I even have to buy groceries, for Christ's sake. Beyond the job, what I do with my time is completely my own to decide. A friend of mine, Eric Welch, once made a joke that’s stuck with me: “I’d rather work at Wendy’s than go to school. Then, at least, I wouldn’t have to keep making chicken nuggets at home.” I’m feeling the same way – yeah, I have to get up early, and yeah, I’m working for eight hours straight, but once I get home, I don’t have to think about work again until I get there the next morning. You know those precious nights where you finish all of your homework well before dinner? Picture that, except every single night. I’m uncomfortably close to being an adult.

And it’s this free time with my friends that I’m looking forward to, more than anything else. I feel like I’m finally getting a taste of real life, now that every ounce of my time isn’t being consumed by homework or resume-enhancing extracurriculars or the dread that a resident is going to pound on my door the second after I’ve pressed “play” on the DVD player. I’m finally free to do what I want to do, whether it’s a day at Barton Springs or a night at home watching a South Park marathon on Comedy Central. It’s my choice, though, made independently of curfews or homework or external expectations. I feel like my real life is finally beginning (shoutout to the Colin Hay song). Here’s hoping that ten years from now, I remember the summer of 2009 not as the limbo between junior and senior year, but as the first time I stood on my own two feet.

The ABCs of Dorm Life

2009-05-29T03:33:00.002-05:00

I’ve lived in the Quad for three years now, two as a resident, one as an RA. During my freshman and sophomore years, I tried to be an active member here – I hung out in lobbies, I met people, I went to events. By the end of each year, I knew a substantial portion of the community by face, major, and general personality, if not always by name. This year, on the administrative side, I’ve learned a lot about what it takes to make dorm life work. Having dedicated this much time to a single building and the people in it, I feel like I should have plenty to say about my experiences here. Some of it is common sense and some of it is probably truer for me than for anyone else, but I’d like to think that some of my musings are worthwhile enough to pass on.

Friends

There’s a period of about two weeks at the beginning of every school year when everyone is open to meeting new people. Take advantage of it. Leave your door open, meet all your neighbors, ask the girl in the lobby what book she’s reading, ask if you can tag along when you see a group going to dinner. No one knows anyone, so people are much more willing than usual to reciprocate any kind of effort that you make. The more seeds you plant at the beginning of the year, the more relationships you can potentially have later. You can be “that cool guy that I had dinner with that one time, who I always meant to get to know better” to as many people as you want. Once this window of opportunity closes up, trying to make friends with a stranger is just as awkward as it is in real life. Even if you and your next door neighbors and the guys across the hall form a tight group early on, people start showing their true colors around October or November, and you’ll realize that at least a couple of them are douchebags. You’ll want to branch out and make a new circle of friends, and it can happen, but it’s not nearly as easy as it would have been if you hadn’t closed yourself off early on.

Roommates

The best part of my RA job, bar none, is that I get my own room. One of my favorite feelings in the world is waking up in the morning behind a locked door and dozing for hours, knowing that people can’t bother me unless I let them. Most residents aren’t afforded this privilege. Dealing with roommates is one of the classic college issues that most incoming freshmen are worried about, and there’s not really a correct answer to this one. Sometimes it works out great – one of my best friends went potluck her freshman year and ended up living with the girl for all four years of college, two in the dorm, two in an apartment. Sometimes it’s not so great – insert any number of roommate horror stories that you’ve heard here.

Your roommate is the person that you’re going to spend the most time with over the next year. As such, try to give each other as much space as possible. If you have the choice of studying in your room or at the library, choose the library every once in a while. Go over to your friend’s place instead of inviting him over to yours. Kill time outside or in one of the lobbies or at Starbucks; don’t sit at your desk and play Flash games for hours at a time. Don’t be that guy who never leaves the room except to eat and go to class. If your roommate notices that you’re making an effort to give him privacy, he’ll reciprocate. Privacy is very, very hard to come by, and it’s very, very precious. The first thing I used to do at the beginning of each semester was to look at my roommate’s class schedule to see when I knew he’d be out of the room. That was my naked time, and it was glorious. The point is, stay out of each other’s hair and in each other’s good graces as long as you can. A time will come (oh, yes, it will come) when you want nothing more than to find/replace the word “and” with the word “penis” in his paper that’s worth 50% of his final grade. Ignore it. Outward hostility, especially with three months left to go, is too stressful. It's not that your roommate's a bad guy; neither of mine were, by a long shot. It's just that he's always there.

Pianos

This one is small but important. One of your dorm’s lobbies is probably going to have a piano for student use. Let’s say that piano hours are from ten in the morning through midnight. Yes, technically, you’re allowed to sit down at 10:01 on a Saturday morning and start pounding out Mendelssohn’s Wedding March. Don’t. Please, please don’t. Don’t sit down to play when there are more than ten other people in the room. Don’t play scales for half an hour, up and down, over and over. Don’t practice the same two measures twenty times in a row (don’t laugh, I’ve heard it happen). Don’t think that struggling through a vague approximation of the chords to “The Scientist” is going to get you laid. And, most importantly of all, no matter how good you are, don’t think that anyone is going to be impressed. We’re cynical college kids. Nothing impresses cynical college kids.

The RA

First of all, let me explain that the RA gig is a pretty sweet deal. We get free room and board and all that, but more importantly, it’s to a graduating college student’s resume what the Eagle Scout Award is to a high-schooler’s. Leadership experience? Check. Conflict management? Check. Public speaking? Check. Working as a member of a team? Check. The list goes on. I’d highly recommend applying for the job if you get the opportunity. Companies fall all over themselves to hire someone with this much voluntary community service, in a very literal sense of the term. It’s a lot of work, but it’s already started paying off for me.

The most important thing to understand about RAs is that everyone has a boss. With the occasional exception, we’re not power-tripping sadists who write people up (or, in DHFS lingo, “document incidents”) and dump hundreds of dollars’ worth of alcohol down the drain for kicks. We’re just trying to keep the peace and do our jobs. If there’s a party going on and I let it slide, my boss is going to ask me why I haven’t done anything about the half-dozen noise complaints I’ve received. I’m not particularly inclined to put my job on the line for something as inconsequential as a dorm-room kegger.

And if you honestly believe that no one can tell what you’re doing behind these paper-thin walls, you’re kidding yourself. Maybe your next-door neighbor just wants to crash for sixteen straight hours after an all-nighter. Robbing a college student of sleep is a cardinal sin. You’re affecting more people than you think you are. Yes, you can pack fifteen people into your tiny dorm room, blast music, and drink yourselves sick, but is that really the most fun thing you can think of to do on a Friday night? In Austin? Really? And while we’re on this topic…

Alcohol

I would highly advise that your first drinking experience not be during your first weekend of college. As cool as your new friends are, and as well as you’re getting along, and as much as you know you’re all gonna be best buddies for the next four years, in the end, they’re the new neighbors that moved in three days ago. Odds are good that they’re more concerned with having a good time themselves than with baby-sitting you. They’re not gonna watch how much you’re drinking, they’re not gonna tell you to take it easy for a while, they’re not gonna suggest that you sit this round out, get some water. They just won’t care that much, and it’s not their job to, because if you don’t know what you can and can’t handle, you’re already miles behind. If you’re going to drink in college (and let’s face it, you probably will), know what you’re doing in advance. People who partied in high school won’t have a problem. People who didn’t, get together with a couple of friends over the summer, designate someone to stay sober, and experiment. Seriously. Save yourself the embarrassment.

In Conclusion

I’m going to miss the Quad. I really am. You know how sometimes, you’re at a party, and you suddenly realize that all your friends left while you were on the back porch chatting up the cute girl who turns out to have a boyfriend, and you’re not ready to call it a night, but you don’t know anyone at the party anymore, and that’s kind of awkward, so you drive home and watch a couple South Park reruns on your computer before going to bed? I suspect that’s the feeling that I’m going to have every day next year when I finish class, the resignation to spending the rest of the day in the netherworld that is my West Campus apartment. I’m going to miss knowing everyone. I’m going to miss reading by the statue. I’m going to miss LOST parties in the Q. I’m going to miss Tuesday Night Midnight iPod dancing. I’m going to miss chatting with Rey (the night guy with the beard) till four in the morning ‘cause he’s there and I’m not tired. I’m going to miss that designated spot where my group of friends meets every night without fail to hang out and pretend to do homework.

Dorm life has its drawbacks (i.e., sharing your bathroom with fifty-five other dudes and not being allowed to have friends over past 11:30), but there’s nothing else like it at any point in your life. You have to enjoy it while you can, because once it’s gone, you can never get it back.

Don't see that every day...

2009-05-29T03:29:00.003-05:00

Originally posted on Facebook on Wednesday, March 4, 2009.

I'm writing down what happened while I still remember the details. A homeless guy crashed my nonverbal class this morning, just to freak everyone out, I think. He came in about ten minutes into class and climbed the stairs to sit up in the back row. Obviously not a student - older, dirty, haggard. He sipped from a juice box that couldn't possibly have contained just juice. He lit up a cigarette, puffed on it, put it out, sprayed Febreeze to cover the smell. I didn't see that part, but my neighbor told me about it - she's the one who pointed him out to me to begin with.

His behavior was so erratic that he was making the entire class (75+) uncomfortable. It must have showed, because Professor Dailey finally stopped her lecture in the middle of a point and asked, "Is there something going on?" Total silence. No one wanted to point him out for fear of invoking his wrath. "Yes!" someone from the back shouted. More silence. "What?" Dailey asked. More silence. Finally, a girl gestured towards him and said, "I think we have a, uh, a guest speaker."

He looked up; he'd been found out. Dailey immediately processed the situation. He stood up and started to walk down towards her. Not menacing, but the total unpredictability of what might or might not happen had everyone on edge. "You're welcome to stay if you want, sir," she said. What else could she say?"

I just want to tell a joke," he said, as if the idea had just occurred to him.

Shit. The spotlight was on him now, he knew it, and he was ready to milk it for all it was worth.

"I'm afraid we don't have time for that," she said. "But you can sit back down if you want."

"I just want to tell my joke," he slurred again in a deep southern drawl.

"We can't do that," she said, "and I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

Total, complete, deafening silence. He started back up the steps to his chair. He was clearly affronted, angry. That was the worst part. "What do you call a B.S.?" he asked. "Bullshit."

"Sir, you need to leave, or I'm going to call security," said Dailey. No trace of hesitation or fear, to her immense credit.

He was back at his seat, gathering his things, brushing off the table, putting on his jacket. "What do you call an M.S.? More shit."

My cell phone was already out of my pocket, and I was scrolling through my contacts, ready to call UTPD if necessary. I put my head down on the table - too tense, too uncomfortable, too unpredictable, and yeah, a little scary. Dailey threatened to call security again.

"What do you call a Ph.D.?" he asked. He mumbled the answer to this one, realizing for the first time how embarrassing the situation was for him and how uneasy he was making all of us. Every eye in the class was on him as he slowly trudged down the stairs, around the corner, and out the door. We heard it slam. The room exploded in nervous and relieved laughter.

A student in the class, a bigger guy, left the room to call the cops at Dailey's request. When he came back in, he said that students outside had seen him go down the hallway and out of sight. The assumption is that he left the building via a back elevator before he could get caught. He left his wool cap behind.

Only in Austin.

P.S. Saul suggested that a better punchline for this one might have run something like, "I looked the guy's joke up on Google when I got back to my room a couple hours ago. Turns out that 'Ph.D.' stands for 'Piled Higher and Deeper.'"

I should be sleeping...

2009-05-29T03:21:00.001-05:00

Still consolidating...

Most of the Plan II Junior Seminars (TC 357s) take place in the two classrooms in the Joynes Reading Room in Carothers. I’ve been seeing old dorm friends from freshman year around the Quad a lot lately, and it’s always fun to chat for a couple minutes and catch up before they head into class. “Which TC are you here for?” I’m always asked at some point in the conversation.

“I’m not in one this semester, actually,” I respond. “I, uh, I still live here.”

Now, granted, I’m an RA, which means that I have my own room and that I live for free. But I live where I work, I can’t cook my own meals, I can’t have friends over past 11:30 p.m. on weeknights and 1:00 a.m. on weekends, I share my bathroom with fifty-five other dudes, and I’m put under house arrest a couple times a month.

I got hungry last night at around one-thirty in the morning. I considered my usual feast of Teddy Grahams and peanut butter, the only food I currently have in my room, but instead, I walked over to 7-11 and bought myself a ham sandwich. Jury-rigging a meal out of leftover snacks isn’t as appealing as it used to be.

I’m taking fifteen hours this semester, my usual load, but school doesn’t consume my life the way it used to. I go to classes and do all my homework, but that can only take up so many hours of a day. Maybe it’s because of the job, maybe it’s because I’m spending more and more time off campus, away from this whole academic world, or maybe I’ve just stopped caring altogether, but classes have started to seem more like just another part of my life and less like my life.

Every Thursday night, I meet up with some friends at the Crown & Anchor Pub for beer and cheese fries. The bouncer has stopped checking our IDs because he sees us every week. We go through a few pitchers, shoot the shit about our weeks and plans for the upcoming weekend, joke about sports or politics or girls, and then go our separate ways to finish whatever residual homework we might have. Nothing particularly exciting, just another way to pass time on a random weeknight.

Maybe what I’m trying to say is that things that used to seem new and exciting, things I used to look forward to, aren’t anymore. Every high school senior looks forward to moving into a dorm, living on his own and meeting new friends, but the time when living in a dorm is “cool” has come and gone for people my age; I usually don't bring up where I live unless I'm asked. I don’t dislike it and I don’t wish I were somewhere else, but the whole experience is familiar enough that it’s lost its original appeal. Kind of a “been there, done that” attitude by now. The same goes for the RA gig, midnight snacks, school, bars, friends. Nothing I do excites me – it doesn’t depress me, but I don’t feel like I have anything to look forward to, either. It is what it is, for better or worse.

I used to believe that growing up was a lot like hair growing – you get it cut short, you notice it’s short. You see it in the mirror every day and don’t pay attention to how it’s always getting a little bit longer. One day, months later, you compare yourself in the mirror to a picture of the day you got it cut, and you say, “Wow, I look totally different.” And maybe I still believe that, I don’t know. But now, I’m starting to think that growing up happens in distinct stages. I think you know you’re moving from one stage to another when you realize that you've gotten used to everything in your life. Every aspect of it is familiar, comfortable, commonplace. And I think that that’s a good place to be and all, but sometimes, you need something exciting on the horizon to get you through the day. That’s what I'm lacking at the moment.

But I think realizing that that’s what I'm lacking is half the battle.

25 Things About Me

2009-05-29T03:14:00.003-05:00

Reposted from Facebook. I'm consolidating. I'm especially proud of this one, though.

1. I sing, hum, and whistle unconsciously. It’s a habit I gave up trying to control a long time ago.

2. I have an encyclopedic knowledge of Lost, Saturday Night Live, Scrubs, and seasons one through ten(ish) of The Simpsons.

3. Speaking of Lost and Scrubs, if a work of fiction can get me to care about the characters, I’m hooked no matter how horrible and/or confusing the plots get. See also: Firefly, Arrested Development, and Animorphs.

4. I went to an all-guys’ Catholic school for eight years, from fifth through twelfth grade, and I state this fact as a blanket excuse every time I end up in an awkward social situation. It's scary how often it works.

5. When I can’t think of anything else to say, I spout off a movie quote. One usually just jumps to mind as I’m trying to work out something original to say. I feel validated as long as one person in the group gets it.

6. My top two “dream careers” are probably to be a novelist and a Broadway singer, but I’m too much of a realist to seriously pursue either of them.

7. I recently discovered that I can, in fact, function without my morning cup of coffee. That doesn’t mean I’m quitting or cutting back, but it’s nice to know that I have the option.

8. “That’s what she said” jokes and any joke about poo will always, always, always be funny.

9. I haven’t cried since February of my sophomore year of high school.

10. I’m cursed with maturity beyond my years. Whenever I fail a test, my reaction is always to shrug my shoulders and realize that I must not have studied hard enough.

11. I’m a grammar Nazi thanks to four consecutive years of English Lab at the aforementioned all-guys’ Catholic school. A simple sentence consists of a subject and a verb. A compound sentence consists of two simple sentences separated by a comma. Therefore, "Bob ran and then went to the store" and "Bob ran, and then he went to the store" are both correct.

12. I will never eat at Wendy’s again as long as I live. I haven’t been able to eat their burgers since sixth grade, when three friends and I participated in what we called the “Triple Burger Challenge.” I was sick for a week. I’ve gotten burned out on everything else on their menu, especially chicken nuggets, over two years’ worth of late-night Wendy’s runs with dorm friends. Sorry, Sean.

13. I was born eight weeks prematurely, without my esophagus. Over three years of surgeries, doctors removed my transverse colon, turned it into my esophagus, and sewed my ascending and descending colon together. I have a second belly button, which is where my feeding tube was for eighteen months or so. I can eat and drink normally now, but I don’t have peristalsis, meaning that biologically, I can’t throw up. This is a problem sometimes.

14. I’m very task-oriented – once I start working on something, I hate being interrupted. When I sit down to watch a movie, it irks the crap out of me when I can’t get fifteen minutes in without getting a call or a text message. Likewise, when I dive into a pile of packages to check in at the front desk, people wait to call me until right after I’ve fallen into my groove.

15. In a crowd, I’d rather not be noticed than be singled out, either positively or negatively.

16. One of the greatest compliments I’ve ever gotten was from my friend Saul, who once told me, “Part of your charm is that you think you’re much more socially retarded and awkward than you actually are.”

17. That being said, I do have a tendency to say non-awkward things in the most awkward way possible. Example: at the end of last semester, we had a box of three-dozen cookies at the front desk. I was starting my shift as Amara was ending hers, and she wondered aloud whether she should take any cookies to go. What went through my head was, “Between the option of no cookies and free cookies, one should always choose free cookies,” and what I said was, “Amara, you always take as many cookies as you can carry.”

18. I’m very easily startled but almost impossible to scare.

19. I indulge myself in nostalgia a lot, whether it’s buying the first season of “The Adventures of Pete and Pete” on DVD and watching it all in one sitting, Facebook-friending all of my elementary school friends that I haven’t seen in ten years, or making it a point to drop by Kids’ Kastle (the local park) every time I go home. I think it’s because I still consider elementary school and middle school as the happiest period of my life thus far.

20. I overthink everything, especially when it comes to girls.

21. My name is Matt, and I’m a Facebook addict. To say that I check it multiple times daily is an understatement. I like feeling caught up with what’s going on in everyone’s lives, even people I don’t talk to anymore.

22. I write a lot. I’ve written a couple short stories this semester, and I think they’re pretty good, but I’ve only shown them to a couple people. This isn’t because I don’t want people to read what I’ve written, because I do. It’s mainly because I don’t want readers to feel obligated to tell me I’m the reincarnation of Ernest Hemingway if my story turns out to be another mediocre effort by some student writer.

23. I see grad school as a means of prolonging the inevitable.

24. I can see both sides of any issue, sometimes to the point where I have no clue what I personally believe.

25. Three songs never fail to put me in a good mood: “Purpose,” from Avenue Q; the Across the Universe version of “I’ve Just Seen a Face;” and The Barenaked Ladies’ “If I Had $1,000,000.”

Metaphor

2009-04-05T23:05:00.001-05:00

Whenever I walk into Starbucks, I stand back from the counter, fold my arms, and peruse the menu for a couple minutes. I look over everything they have to offer – plenty of options, limitless combinations. Drip. Espresso. Latte. Cappuccino. Frappuccino. Tea. Hot. Cold. Decaf. Caffeinated. Super-caffeinated. Flavored syrups. Then they have those weird drinks, the ones that I know I won’t like but am tempted to order anyway, just to say I’ve tried it. Then, when the barista asks if I’ve been helped, I step up to the register and ask for the same thing I get every time, a medium cup of black coffee.

Story of my life.

Stuff

2009-04-02T22:56:00.003-06:00

It's been a while since I've posted on here. Guess I ran out of stuff to talk about. Things are going fine - not great, but not horrible, and that's the best you can hope for sometimes. I'm a junior in college and I have no idea what I'm doing with my life. Sums everything up pretty nicely, I think. More? If you insist.

I still haven't found a place to live next year. I think that my parents were secretly hoping that I'd do the RA thing for another year, but it's time to get out of the dorm. I just want to have my own place. I still haven't found a roommate. All of my friends are either graduating or living with whoever they lived with this year, which is what I get for staying behind an extra year, I suppose. I was going to live with this cool girl who's an RA in Littlefield this year, but she's ended up deciding to go elsewhere for grad school. Can't sign a lease until I find a roommate, get can't a roommate if everyone's booked, so I'm pretty much at square one indefinitely.

The past two weeks have been the worst academic experience of my life. I had a 15-page research paper due last Wednesday (for a class I thought I was going to drop until my parents guilt-tripped me out of it two days before the due date), another paper the same day, a program that night, three rough drafts for a portfolio and 100 pages of reading for Thursday, a test Friday, on-call Friday night into Saturday, test Monday, final drafts of the portfolio, a presentation, and another 100 pages of reading for Tuesday. Sounds pretty impressive rattled off in a row like that, doesn't it? Gotta admit, I definitely felt a sense of accomplishment last night as I sat down to watch LOST, guilt-free. I also had two programs tonight (an open-mic night with the whole group and then a movie with Sam), but literally all I had to do was show up. I'm on call on Saturday night, but it'll be a relief to have a socially acceptable excuse to lock myself away for 24 hours, to be honest. Sleep is awesome.

Lots of drama going on with my friends. None of it involves me; I just get to hear all about it every time we hang out. I need drama of my own so that a) I can counter with it when people start talking my ear off and b) when they want to hang out so they can talk about it, I can say, 'Sorry, can't, I'm dealing with my own shit right now.' I'm too non-confrontational. I should work on that.

Don't even get me started on girls, man. I've discovered through empirical research that every girl at UT Austin has a boyfriend. Not even worth the effort anymore.

Lots of little things have been getting to me lately. My laptop's been running slow. The desk computer runs even slower. I can't go a week without someone calling me to ask if I can trade a desk shift or an on-call or why my paperwork is late. My stapler jams so much that I've stopped updating the posting board I'm supposed to be maintaining on a daily basis. I lost the syllabi for all of my classes somewhere in the giant quagmire that is my desk. All of this stuff combined sometimes makes me shudderingly, have-to-stop-to-breathe-and-tell-myself-it's-gonna-be-okay angry. If it's the little stuff that makes me happy, I guess it's the little stuff that gets on my nerves, too. Fair trade-off.

Today was one of the good days, though. Class from 11-2, dropped by Starbucks to get a couple gift cards for our program, showered, got lunch at Kins Mart (turkey sandwich and coffee) and ate it outside. Beautiful day. The Quad RHC was giving away ice-cream sundaes, so I took a bowl and shot the shit with people for a good hour and a half. Open-mic night was cool; I sang "All My Lovin'" a cappella to kill time and then did a duet with Magown ("Numb," by Linkin Park) at the end. Program with Sam after that - we showed "United States of Leland" in one of the Joynes Rooms. Fucking brilliant movie.

Month and a half left in the Quad. I'm gonna miss this place, I really am. I miss anonymity sometimes, though. The whole third-year/RA combination means that there are very few people who don't know me. I bask in it sometimes, but others, I wish I could read outside for fifteen minutes without getting interrupted. Enjoying it while I can, because once this time is over, I can never get it back.

So...yeah. That's my life in a thousand words or less. How are you?

Reason #138 I Love Physics

2008-10-15T22:33:00.002-05:00

Plan II Physics has its reputation as one of those "rite of passage" classes that you hate while you're taking and remember nostalgically afterward. By this point, I don't see how the latter is possible.

Our midterm is tomorrow. We had our normal TA session today (which, by the way, was not announced in the course schedule, so that out of several options offered, the only one I can make is all the way across campus from the class I have right after it), so naturally, it was a review session for the test that was less than 24 hours away. The first question pretty much set the tone for the entire review:

Jordan Frisby: Can you explain the thought process we should be having when we're trying to do a double-slit problem?
TA: Uh...not off the top of my head, no.

...awesome. T-minus 15 hours, 19 minutes until death. Wish me luck.

Physical Jolt

2008-10-15T02:43:00.005-05:00

I've finally been able to put into words that feeling that hits me sometimes, the one that comes out of nowhere, the one I've resigned myself to just waiting out. It's boredom, an intense, pervasive boredom that opens my eyes to the pointlessness of whatever I happen to be engaged in at the time. The kicker, though, is that it also makes anything else that I could be doing -- studying, reading, writing, talking with friends or strangers -- seem equally futile. In those moments, I feel like everything I'm doing, everything I could be doing, and everything I've ever done is just filler, a stimulus meant to keep me occupied in the absence of some greater pursuit that I'm not sure will ever come.

Joel

2008-09-28T02:53:00.004-05:00

He called while I was in the shower. I didn’t listen to the message he’d left; I called him back immediately without even bothering to pull on a pair of boxers under the towel at my waist. While the phone was ringing, I checked the class schedule pinned to my roommate’s bulletin board. He was in lab for another forty-five minutes. Perfect. I pulled off my towel and slung it over the back of my desk chair. I relished these precious moments when I knew I had the room to myself, took advantage of them however I could. The line came to life. “Hello?”

“Joel, man, how’s it going?” I fell into a sitting position on my bed, back against the wall, feet crossed at the ankles over the edge.

“Pretty good, pretty good. Nothin’ special to report.” He spoke slowly with a heavy southern accent, voice deep and gravelly. “You?”

“About the same,” I said. “College life, I guess. You know. I got midterms next week, so that’s keeping me busy.”

“I bet. Any good classes this semester?”

“Yeah, actually.” I leaned forward and placed my pillow lengthwise between my back and the cold wall. “Philosophy, economics, art history. Just some prereqs.”

“Cool, man. I’m, uh…I’ve been readin’ some, uh, some Marx in my spare time. Made it through the Communist Manifesto. Good stuff.”

I laughed. “Yeah, definitely, good stuff. So, what’ve you been up to? I haven’t heard from you in a long time, I was starting to think you died or something.”

It was his turn to laugh. “Nah, dude, still goin’. I got a job as an electrician, it’s badass, I get to climb telephone poles ‘n’ shit. Fixed up a transformer this mornin’.”

“Nice.” Silence for a couple seconds. I rubbed my hair with my free hand, top, left side, around the back, right side, drying it a little more. “Where are you living these days, man?”

“I got myself a place in Round Rock a couple months ago. It’s pretty sweet.”

I sat up straight. “Round Rock? You’re kidding.”

“Nope. It was time to move outta the house, man. The parents were drivin’ me apeshit. I got my own apartment now.”

I grinned and punched the air. “Dude, I live half an hour away from you.”

“You serious?”

“Yeah, man, you’re like thirty minutes north, tops.”

He laughed. “Holy shit, that’s awesome. We’re gettin’ together. What’re you doing Saturday?”

“Actually, I think I’m busy on Saturday.” I scratched my stomach. “How’s Friday?”

“Friday’s no good, man,” he said. “I work a couple nights a week at Kroger to pull in some extra dough. What’s up on Saturday?”

I slid forward onto my feet, stood up, began to pace back and forth on the crappy green carpet I’d borrowed from our garage back home. “It’s nothing, it’s just…I promised this friend of mine, Trevor, I said I’d go to a thing he’s having at his apartment.”

“A thing? Like a party?”

“Yeah. I told him I’d go.” I added, after the briefest of hesitations, “You can come, if you want. It wouldn’t be a big deal.”

“Nah, man, I don’t have a car. You got one?”

“Yeah, I do.” I drove a used BMW that I’d bought from my neighbor the previous summer and paid seven hundred dollars a year to park it in a garage halfway across campus.

“Then getcher ass up here, man. Get shit-faced here, get shit-faced there. What’s the difference?”

“Well—”

He cut me off. “Well, what? I haven’t seen you for three years, dick wrinkle.”

I smiled to myself. Another pause. Without realizing it, I had wandered over to my desk and was sifting through the spare change I kept in a plastic cup next to my laptop. “See, the thing is, there’s kinda this girl that’s gonna be there.”

Taryn. Shoulder-length brown hair, green eyes, good complexion, a smile that couldn’t make me not smile back. We’d met in my philosophy class when the kid in the front row had launched into another anecdote tangentially related to the topic at hand. Okay, stop talking now, I’d whispered, eyes shut, squeezing the bridge of my nose. She’d been sitting in front of me, had actually turned around, winked, smiled. We chatted every Tuesday and Thursday after that, before and after class, nothing substantial.

“Oh, okay, I see what’s goin’ on,” Joel said. “You wanna get yourself laid this weekend. It’s cool, man. Blow me off for some chick. Whatever. I can drink by myself and cry, it’s not a big deal.”

“Nah, it’s not like that,” I said. I’d lost count of how many college girls I’d met and fallen in love with only to lose interest once I got to know them. Maybe I had high standards, or maybe weekend keggers weren’t the best way to find a steady girlfriend. Either way, that hadn’t happened with Taryn (not yet, anyway), and I considered it notable. I almost felt an obligation to myself to pursue the possibility of her and me. Of us. I was hoping that with a couple beers in me, I’d be able to talk my way into buying her dinner.

“What, you like her or something?”

“Little bit. She’s…yeah. A little bit.”

“Aw, that’s cute. Just don’t blow it by doin’ somethin’ stupid like bein’ yourself.”

I sat down in bed again, pulled at loose threads in my blanket. “You’re just jealous ‘cause my date for this weekend doesn’t have pit hair.”

“What the hell’re you talkin’ about, man? I’m your date for this weekend. You’ll see her around campus, right?” Pause. “Right?”

“Yeah, probably. We’re in the same philosophy class.”

“See? Exactly. I haven’t seen you for three years, man. I miss you. It hurts sometimes.”

I smirked. “I love you, too, man. We’ll see what happens, I’ll let you know sooner than later.” My phone beeped once, twice, three times. “Hey, can I call you back? I’m getting another call, I think it’s my friend about this group project due next week.”

“Yeah, no worries. I’ll see you Saturday.”

“We’ll see.” I pulled the phone away from my ear to hang up and remembered something I’d meant to tell him. “Oh, and Joel?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m naked right now.”

Silence, then a click as he hung up on me. I laughed and switched over. It was my mom, asking if I’d read the e-mail she’d sent that morning.

* * *

“That it?” Joel asked, finishing an overly complicated knot. He stepped across the chasm between the bow and solid ground.

I looked around. Life jackets were all hung up on their posts. Fishing poles leaned against the wooden railing, spaced carefully so the lines wouldn’t get tangled. Three ropes secured the sleek Malibu to the dock, one in the front to anchor it, one each on the port and starboard sides to keep it from bumping the edges and scratching the paint. We’d refilled the gas tank so the next guy who took it out wouldn’t get stranded and have to use the walkies we carried around for emergencies. “I think so, man,” I said. “Let’s head back.”

“You on break now?”

I checked my watch. “As of seven minutes ago. I got noon to two off today.”

“Same here, dude. Movie in the staff lounge?”

“Sure, sounds good,” I said. “Let’s drop by the dining hall first to grab lunch, though.”

“Good call.”

Joel and I stepped into our flip-flops and walked side by side down the pier. The cabin area, the closest of them about thirty feet back from the water line, was more or less empty; everyone was already at the dining hall except for the kids who had to change out of wet swimsuits. The sun beat down on us from directly above, making even the shortest of treks around the grounds a formidable task. The breeze coming off the lake did little to mitigate the July heat. As much as we encouraged the kids to wear sunscreen every day, there seemed to be an unspoken agreement among the rest of us that to take this precaution was, in Joel’s own words, to “pussy out.” Our red faces and peeling arms were marks of our small act of obstinate rebellion.

The dining hall came within view as we crested a sloping, dusty hill. Everyone should have been inside already, but campers and counselors alike were crammed underneath the front porch area, vying to stay in the shade. We took the steps two at a time and found ourselves face to face with Charlie. “What’s goin’ on?” Joel asked.

“Cabin One was supposed to be doing KP, only they just got here a couple minutes ago. Mark forgot about it,” Charlie answered. Kitchen Prep – folding out the tables, setting them, filling water jugs, nothing a group of nine-year-olds couldn’t handle with a little supervision. The duty belonged to a different cabin each meal. It figured that Mark, of all people, wouldn’t bother to check the schedule at breakfast. Forgetting to lock the archery shed or showing up a couple minutes late to chapel was one thing, but if there was one job it was unspoken to never mess up, it was KP. Dropping the ball meant keeping ninety hungry kids and fifteen hungrier counselors out of the air-conditioned dining hall just that much longer.

“Son of a—” A passing kid (Sam? Sean?) grinned up at Joel, eyes wide, anticipating the swear. Joel glanced at him. “What’re you lookin’ at, little dude?”

“Nothing.” The kid feigned innocence, broke Joel’s gaze and looked out across the lake.

“That’s right, nothin’. Keep movin’, man.” Joel clapped the kid on the shoulder. He pulled off his backwards ball cap and ran his fingers through his long, unwashed hair. “Okay, here’s what’s gonna happen. I’m gonna go in there and help Mark out. Charlie, keep the kids entertained, play guitar or something. Do a repeat song. They love those. Chris, grab lunch for the two of us outta the kitchen, then ask Rich if we can borrow one of his videos. You know he gets pissy when people use ‘em without asking, even though he keeps them in the fu—” He caught himself, looked around. “—in the lounge. Meet you there in ten.”

“I’ll help you and Mark out, I don’t mind,” I said.

“Nah, you covered my rear couple days ago, ‘member? I owe ya. Gettin’ lunch is more important, anyway. You screw it up, that’s on you.”

The staff lounge was just an extra cabin, the one furthest out from the main office and the dining hall. We’d pushed all the bunks up against one wall to make room for a foosball table with a broken leg, a fourteen-inch TV with a built-in VHS player set up on an extra chair, and the removable backseat of Charlie’s truck that we called our couch. Piles of forgotten belongings, towels, t-shirts, books, empty packs of cigarettes, candy bar wrappers, old issues of Maxim, shampoo bottles, littered the room. One of the light bulbs was burned out. The AC was finicky at best. Ants had appropriated the windowsill for themselves and were ready to launch an assault on the top bunk adjacent to it. It was a shithole, not half as nice as even our normal cabins, except for the trumping factor that no campers were allowed in, period, no exceptions. I was splashing lukewarm water on my face when Joel ripped the door open.

“Fuckin’ Mark!” he shouted.

“I know,” I said.

“That’s the fourth fuckin’ time this term, asshole. People gotta cover his ass ‘cause he’s prob’ly jackin’ off when he’s s’posed to be checkin’ the fuckin’ schedule!”

“I know.”

He paced around the cabin, seeking out pieces of trash to kick viciously as he went. “I was with him in a cabin a couple weeks ago, he got sick and took two days off. Two fuckin’ days, loungin’ in the nurse’s clinic while I’m dealin’ with ten fuckin’ kids by myself. He comes back when he’s better, takes over for like ten minutes, and then, get this, goes on his two-hour break. If the kids hadn’t been watchin’, I woulda punched him in the fuckin’ face.”

“Dude, chill,” I said. “We’re so close, man. Three more days this week, kids go home, we clean up, and then we’re outta here. Summer’s over, you never have to see him again. Just…just don’t do anything stupid.”

“I’m gonna punch him in the fuckin’ face right before we leave, that’s what I’m gonna do. He deserves it, you know he does.” He jumped up onto the couch, holding his arms out for balance as it rocked back and forth.

“So what’re you doin’ after camp ends?” I asked loudly. “Headin’ home?”

“Nah, Eric asked if I wanted to live out here for a while. Cigarette?” He pulled a pack of Marlboros out of the cargo pocket of his shorts.

I nodded. “Let’s head around back.”

“Nah, just smoke on the front porch. Kids’re all at lunch, no one’ll see.”

“Fair enough.”

We went outside and sat on the front steps of the cabin, underneath the shade of the awning, where the concrete was just bearable enough to touch to bare skin. Joel lit my cigarette first, then his. I inhaled, pulled it away, breathed the rest of the way in, closed my eyes, felt my head and fingers and toes tingle. All I’d had that morning was two cups of coffee and a Pop-Tart. No wonder it was hitting so well.

“So you’re living on camp for a while?” I asked.

“Yeah, at least through December. Groups come out every weekend, churches, schools, stuff like that. I’m gonna run programs for ‘em. Prob’ly do maintenance stuff during the week.”

“Cool.”

“Yeah, I’m lookin’ forward to it. How ‘bout you? What’re you up to when you get outta here?”

I tapped the ash off the end of my cigarette. “Shit, man, I got two weeks left of summer, then senior year. AP classes, SAT, ACT, college apps, writing for the paper, editing for the yearbook. You’re a lucky bastard, you know that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Dude, you’re gonna have it so easy here. Look at all this.” Waves lapped up against the lakeshore. A passing skier about a hundred feet out waved at us. We waved back. I shook my head and took a drag. “You have no idea.”

“I’m gonna be studyin’ too, actually, now that you mention it.”

I looked over at him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, I figger with all the free time I’m havin’, I’m gonna try and study for the GED. I turn eighteen next April, I’ll probably take the test then, go to a community college in the fall. Can’t do jack shit that makes money without some kinda degree. I’m thinkin’ environmental science, that’d be cool.”

“Think you can do it?”

Joel displayed his goofy, dog-like grin. “Just ‘cause I been home-schooled since first grade doesn’t mean I’m a dumbass, man. I can read. I can count. I don’t need to go to a fuckin’ fancy private school like you to get into college.” He stubbed out his cigarette on the step and tossed it into the barbecue pit. “Movie time?”

I stood up and stretched. “Yeah, sure.”

“What’d they have for lunch?”

“Corn dogs. I grabbed like ten of ‘em.”

“Sweet.”

* * *

After hanging up with my mom, I decided to lie down for a quick catnap before dinner. I didn’t sleep. I thought about the last real conversation I’d had with Joel – some random break during the last week of camp when we chilled in the staff lounge and fell asleep during a movie. We didn’t have much free time after that between our daily responsibilities and the chaos of closing down, and the end-of-camp banquet had been more of an occasion for back-slapping and bellowed inside jokes than quiet reflection. I’d think about him from time to time, remind myself to call him or shoot him an e-mail, but I’d inevitably forget.

Just go. You know you want to see Joel. It’s been three years.

This is my chance to talk to Taryn about something other than David Hume’s design argument for the existence of God. I can’t pass this up.

He really wants to see you. Don’t let him down just so you can talk to some girl you may or may not pursue some kind of relationship with over the next two months.

If she hooks up with some other guy while I’m getting piss-drunk with an electrician, I’m gonna regret it.

That’s not fair. He’s not an electrician, he’s your friend. He’s Joel. You saying you don’t want to slum with someone whose life plan doesn’t include a seven-figure salary?

I’m not slumming.

You go to Trevor’s party, you’re gonna put way too much pressure on yourself to try and win her over. You’re gonna get all nervous and awkward, like always, and you’re gonna scare her off. Don’t set yourself up to get let down. Be a man, ask her to coffee after class next week. Just leave your college life behind for a night, get away, clear your head, relax, catch up with an old friend. That’s exactly what you need this weekend.

“Screw it,” I muttered. I rolled over, picked my phone up from the bedside table, and called Joel. I told him I’d be there on Saturday, wouldn’t miss it for anything.

* * *

Joel’s apartment was in a pretty seedy part of town. The streetlights were all out, so I occasionally had to swerve my car one way or the other to illuminate the numbers painted on the curb with my headlights. The sidewalks, where there were sidewalks, were stained and littered with broken glass, weeds growing about ankle-high between cracks in the pavement. Loud hip-hop and shouting echoed down the street from a house up ahead. A shirtless man who had to be in his thirties, sitting by himself on a front porch, silver flask by his side, stared me down as I cruised by.

I pulled into the parking lot and turned the engine off. As I was getting out of the car, almost as an afterthought, I peeled the GPS I’d gotten for Christmas off the far corner of the windshield and tucked it inside an empty fast food bag under the passenger’s seat. I double-clicked the lock button on my key ring, tried the door handle to make sure it had worked. The crumpled post-it note in my pocket said to take the stairs up to the third floor.

The complex was built motel-style, with an uncovered walkway on each floor leading to individual apartments. Dead leaves, dried mud, cigarette butts had accumulated along the edges of every landing in the stairwell. I reached the third floor and strode down the porch, squinting to read the faded numbers on each door. My left shoe squelched in something wet. I turned around and walked backwards to see what it was. Yep. That’s vomit. Awesome. I knocked on the door. While I was waiting, I felt like a bullfighter as I stamped and slid my foot on the doormat to clean my shoe off. The mat was filthy enough already that I didn’t feel bad about it.
The door opened. Joel looked exactly as I remembered him – shirtless, tan, scruff along his jaw and down his neck, greasy hair pulled into a loose ponytail. “Chris, man!” He pulled me into a bear hug. “Holy shit, it’s good to see ya. C’mon in.”

I stepped in and looked around. Bed in the far corner, a chest of drawers, a couch with a tear traversing one of the cushions, a basic kitchen, a circular wooden table with two mismatched chairs pulled in close, a door that presumably led to the bathroom.

“It’s nothin’ fancy, but it’s home,” said Joel. “Can I grab you a beer?”

“Yeah, definitely.”

He grabbed a Shiner off the counter. He twisted the cap off and handed the bottle to me. Classy, compared to the Keystone and Natty Lite that most college parties offered; Joel didn’t mess around, apparently. He pulled cigarettes out of his pocket, lit one, offered them to me.

I shook my head. “No thanks, man, I quit. Dunno if you’ve heard, that shit’s bad for you.”

He wiggled the pack. “C’mon, Christine, just take one.”

“Maybe later.”

“Whatever.” He tossed the pack onto the table. “Take a seat, man. Kick yer shoes off and stay a while.”

I laid out on the couch, Joel took his bed, and we reminisced. We joked about the problem kids from each term, pranks we’d pulled on each other, pranks the kids had pulled on us. We dredged up inside jokes I hadn’t thought about in years, quoting funny (whether inadvertently or purposefully) exchanges and one-liners, complete with voices and exaggerated gestures. The stories got louder and more dynamic, overlapped each other as we indulged ourselves in the past. Joel had kept in touch with everyone from camp more than I had, so he filled me in on what they were doing these days – Charlie had a B.A. in English and was teaching high school. Rich was married with a kid on the way. Eric, our boss, had left the camp and was starting his own business.

“Christ, everyone’s so grown up,” I said, setting my drink on the coffee table. “That just leaves you and me, I guess. The young’uns. Not ready for the real world quite yet.”

“Speak for yourself, man,” said Joel. “I’m the one with the nine-to-five, ‘member? Work sucks.”

I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. “Yeah, well. College isn’t exactly a picnic, either. I got midterms next week, two tests, two papers, a group project we haven’t even started on. I’m just not gonna sleep, I already know it.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah.”

“Dude.” He took a swig. “I’d rather work than deal with all that shit.”

I looked over at him. “You just said that work sucks.”

“Yeah, but at least with work, I don’t hafta keep screwin’ with wiring when I get home.” He laughed. “Work’s not that bad, I guess. Better than school.”

Something clicked. “Hey, so, whatever happened to that GED you were telling me about?”

“Huh?”

“Remember? Last week of camp, you said you were gonna study for the GED, take the test, go to college?”

He thought for a moment. “Oh, yeah, that. I bought the book, never really looked at it. There’s a lot of stuff in there I don’t give a shit about. Fuck algebra, man. I don’t want to do algebra.”

“You ever gonna come back to it?”

He shrugged. “Eh, maybe. I don’t see why I need to any time soon.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Look around, man. I’m doin’ pretty well. I work all day, come home, pop open a beer, maybe do some readin’, maybe watch some TV. Paycheck covers rent and utilities with plenty left over for food ‘n’ shit. I’m set.”

“You serious?”

“Yeah. Why?”

I shook my head. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

“No, what’s up? You look like you got somethin’ to say.”

“It’s just…it’s nothing. Forget it.” Joel just looked at me. I thought for a moment before I spoke. “You’re really content with this?”

“Of course, man. Why shouldn’t I be?” He leaned back, put his bare feet up on the table, laced his fingers behind his head. Sitting there on his couch, in his shitty apartment, puke drying in the crevasses of my loafers, my BMW parked outside, I realized that Joel and I were two friends with nothing in common but the past. There was no point in arguing this one.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” I said. “You are doing pretty well for yourself.”

Busy Busy Busy

2008-09-15T00:53:00.001-05:00

I’ve decided that I like being busy. Sure, I’ll complain about it in conversation, talk about how many papers I don’t want to write or how many meetings I don’t want to go to, but the truth is, I like it when I have things to do. The alternative to having things to do is…well, not having anything to do, which is fun in very small doses. I’m always excited when the semester ends and I get to go home because it means no responsibilities, complete freedom, well deserved vegging. It’s great for about twenty-four hours. I’ll lounge around the house, watch TV, put on a movie, maybe head over to Starbucks, and then I’ll realize, “This sucks.”

We define our lives by how we occupy our time. I’m a student – I go to class, I write papers, I study for tests. I’m an RA – I work the desk, go on rounds, chat with residents. I used to be an actor – I’ve spent more hours in the UCPA and in Parlin than I could even begin to count. I’m a musician (an aspiring one, anyway) – I write songs in my spare time, put them to music on my keyboard, even record them occasionally down at DJ’s studio. I’m a reader – I read. I’m a writer – I write. You get the idea.

My problem is that I’m a very bad self-motivator; I always have been. The more time I have to do something, the less likely I am to do it. I keep telling myself, “I have plenty of time, I’ll do it later. It’s only one chapter. That’ll take like thirty minutes, tops. I’ll do it after lunch.” Three guesses on whether I ever get around to it. My productivity (and, correlatively, my grades) spikes during hell week of whatever show I happen to be in because I just don’t have the time to procrastinate. I get everything done on time, sometimes early, because I can’t do it later. Go figure. I feel worthwhile, I feel like I’m getting things accomplished. Obviously, weeks like these come at the expense of both sleep and sanity, but man, am I productive.

And yeah, when it’s all over, I’m burnt out and exhausted, but thinking about it, that’s no worse than the excruciating boredom that occurs during June and July and random Thursday afternoons when I’m done with homework but no one else is. It’s amazing how much effort the smallest things seem to take when there’s nothing else to do. “I finally have time to check out that book, but that means walking all the way over to the library. Meh.” “I can see that new movie, but that means looking up times, wrangling people to go, driving to the theater, paying eight bucks, etc.” “I could turn on the TV, but the remote’s all the way over there. Not quite worth it.” The boredom is so pervasive that it makes even these minute attempts at entertainment seem insurmountable, let alone anything legitimately exciting like catching a bus downtown to go exploring.

I think that last semester was as horrible as it was due to all my free time and my lack of activities to fill it with. Outwardly, I bragged about my one class on Tuesday/Thursday and how it was over at 11:00 a.m., but in reality, I dreaded going back to the dorm because I knew the rest of the day was going to go downhill from there. I read a lot, I slept a lot, I talked with Sean and Rey a lot, but in retrospect, I feel like I don’t have anything to show, tangible or otherwise, for that entire five-month period. When I have free time, I don’t do anything, when I don’t do anything, I don’t know how I define myself, and when I don’t know how I define myself, that’s a slippery slope that took me a while to come back from.

But anyway, in the same vein as my original point, I’m extraordinarily busy this semester, and I like it. With the combination of RA stuff, maintaining a social life, and Plan II Physics, I barely have time to crap. Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays are all eight-hour days before I even get to homework. Thursdays are a little better, only five hours. Friday and Saturday are my chilling-out days, and Sunday is my homework day. There are random nooks and crannies of spare time to amble around the Quad or hang out with an off-campus friend (late nights, right after my last class of the day, etc.), but for the most part, my time is booked, and I couldn’t be happier.

Tonight, for example, I still have to write my weekly RA report and read a chapter of my Comm textbook. I can stay up as late as I need to because my first class isn’t till noon tomorrow, but I’ve spent all day working the desk, reading for my Holocaust class (crazy interesting, crazy depressing), reading for Physics, and attempting the new problem set with Aubrey and Saul over dinner. I keep wanting to call someone at 1:00 a.m. for an impromptu Kerbey Lane run, but it might get to the point where I have to make time for such a spontaneous event in my schedule. Bummer.

But at least I don’t define myself as a Lostpedia fact-checker anymore.

I get by with a little help from my friends.

2008-08-20T22:51:00.000-05:00

So on the last night of last semester, I walk into the Blobby at about one in the morning and sit down in an armchair in the middle of the room. I immediately stand up and relocate to one of the couches along the wall. I don’t like having my back to anyone in a lobby like that; I like seeing who comes and who goes. It’s something I’ve always done. Anyway, since I got a couple weird looks, by way of explanation, I go, “So my enemies can’t sneak up behind me and strangle me with piano wire or something.”

A couple people laugh, but Evan Kornacki looks over at me and says, “Enemies? Matt Jones doesn’t have any enemies. You’re one of the most diplomatically kind people I’ve ever met.”

I had a realization then, something that didn’t really surprise me but that I had never consciously thought about before. My biggest fear is being hated. As such, I make it a point to be nice to everyone. I’m nice to my friends. I’m nice to strangers. I’m nice to cashiers. I’m even nice to people that I don’t like because I don’t want them to not like me back. I want to be a good friend, the nice guy, the dependable one that everyone can smile at and say hi to and talk to. I don’t like the idea of people talking bad about me behind my back or leaving a room as soon as I enter it. I just don’t.

This conception of myself was further realized during the Rome trip. The fifteen of us quickly divided into two groups, not because people didn’t like each other, but just because of different interests and personality types. Not liking the idea of being left out of anything, I made it a point to be a solid member of both groups. My Organizational Communications professor from last semester would have called me a “bridge” or a “liaison.” I was careful to get in a good amount of face time with each group, see what each was up to on any given night, and go from there. Everyone else came to recognize my status over the course of the trip, and people from each group would ask me about the other one. “What do they say about us?” a girl from one group asked me once. “Why don’t they ever hang out with us?” asked a guy from the other. I provided diplomatic answers, not disrespecting anyone or putting words in anyone’s mouth (I hope). I was a different person depending on whom I was hanging out with, varying my topics of conversation and even, on occasion, my personality to fit the tastes of my present company.

Instead of making twice as many great friends, though, I came to feel that I was stretching myself too thin. I was so busy playing politics that no one in either group got a chance to really know me. I was a peripheral friend, in limbo, not fully integrating myself into any group at all. Not that I really care (and I’m not just saying this, it really doesn’t keep me up at night), but I was kind of, sort of, semi-halfway hoping that I’d walk into my surprise 21st birthday party on the last day of the trip. It didn’t happen, probably because each group figured they didn’t know me well enough and thought the other group would do it. I continued to kind of, sort of, semi-halfway hope that someone would throw me a party within a couple weeks of me getting back home (‘cause you can’t plan your own birthday party, that’s just depressing), but again, no dice, I’d guess for the same reason.

I know that there’s a place for a guy like me, especially in a dorm setting, where rubbing someone the wrong way once results in an entire year of awkward situations and drama. But in my need to be universally liked (or, at least, not despised), I find myself with too many casual acquaintances and not enough good friends. There aren’t many people that I feel I know well enough, or that know me well enough, that I can show up at their door without calling first or call on a random weekday afternoon just because, you know, I’m bored.

Anyway, almost all of my friends from last year have moved off-campus, and I’m still here. I can’t just run into them in the hallway and hang out with them because they’re there anymore; I have to make it a point to get in touch with them and see what their schedules are or what they’re doing this weekend. It seems that, over the coming weeks, I’ll quickly discover who I actually liked and who were just friends of convenience. There are a lot of people I saw every day for the past two years that I might never talk to again, something that I’m not necessarily happy about but can live with. Again, just like in my previous post, that’s life, I guess. It happens.

This year, as an RA, I can’t be everyone’s friend anymore. Since I’m ostensibly in a position of authority, I have to start telling people to not do stuff, write people up, yell at them, etc. Stuff that I tolerated, partook in, laughed at during freshman and sophomore years, I now have to bust up with a stern look on my face so they know that I’m serious. More than one freshman (and, who knows, maybe a couple sophomores) might think I’m a douche. The easiest way to deal with it is to separate myself from them, not make friends with people I’m in charge of, but I honestly don’t know if I can do that. I think that’s going to be the hardest part of this job for me. We’ll see how it goes.

Seperately, as a side note, I can’t help but notice that the only three comments I’ve ever gotten on here are from a random girl gushing over a passing reference to Idina Menzel, DJ responding to that comment, and a spambot. This blog is for me, it’s always been for me, but I’d like to think that I’m not the only one who’s ever read anything I’ve written. I’m not asking for a detailed critique or anything, but if you happen to read this, I was wondering if you’d post a comment with your name or something. I just want to know who my audience is, if I have one at all.

Improved Specimen

2008-07-29T19:34:00.000-05:00

I’ve been indulging myself in nostalgia over the last couple of nights. I’ve been reading the blogs of a few high school friends – I won’t say who, I’ll just say that none of them are people I kept in touch with. The blogs haven’t been updated in years, so I’m not reading about what they’re doing now, but about their sophomore, junior, senior years of high school. I’m mentioned in a few entries, if only in passing, and the anecdotes spark memories that I haven’t thought about in years. It bums me out to know that I might as well be a stranger to people that used to be some of my best friends. That’s life, it happens, I can’t say I’m surprised, but I’m allowed to say that I miss them, right?

Whenever I tell someone that high school sucked, what I really mean is that senior year sucked. I hated senior year for a number of reasons. I was on Accutane, an acne medication with side effects of depression and irritation that probably played a bigger part in my general dissatisfaction with life than I would have admitted at the time. I spent an hour in bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic before school every day, enough to put anyone on edge. My social life was a bit lacking due to circumstances beyond my control (long story for another day). I let that one bad year taint my memory of high school as a whole, but I always forget that I genuinely enjoyed freshman year and sophomore year, at least. I’m remembering friends in the years above me that I haven’t talked to since they graduated because the whole MySpace/Facebook thing hadn’t hit yet. I think I liked looking up to people more than being the top dog myself.

In a further bit of nostalgia, last night I read a bunch of old documents on our home computer. Some are old essays from school, some are brainstorms or outlines for movie scripts that I whipped out in bursts of inspiration and never looked at again, some are short stories that I actually finished, and one in particular was a one-act that I abandoned in favor of the one I ended up putting on as my senior project. It’s good, but it’s really personal and a little bit emo. There’s a monologue (that I actually copied and pasted from my now-defunct Xanga) about “this kid” who thinks his purpose in life is to help others because he’s given up on the possibility of happiness for himself. For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea for one of the major characters to die in a car accident and then deliver a posthumous monologue that, in retrospect, reads eerily like a suicide note. The writing is good enough and I like the general premise that I had, but there’s no way I could have put that onstage.

I’m realizing, not for the first time but more strongly than ever before, that I’m a completely different person than I was two years ago. The biggest change probably came during my first semester of college (living on Blanton 2nd, for example, helped me grow a pair of balls), but lessons that I learned as early as my first weekend in Austin and as recently as last semester continue to shape who I am. I read stuff that I wrote during junior and senior year of high school, and I don’t even recognize myself as the author – the words are familiar, but the mindset behind them isn’t. When I say (and I think I’ve said it on here at some point) that I can’t believe I did a lot of the stuff that I did in high school, I say it because I can’t in a million years imagine doing those things now. I’m not gonna lie – for a while, I was a little bit of a creeper. I stalked a girl on the Spain trip (at the time, I thought I was being “outgoing” and “friendly”), I followed people around at play practice, my primary method of communication was AIM, little stuff like that. I learned more social skills in my first two weeks on B2 than I did at every high school dance combined.

This mindset bled over into college, of course, and as such, I think I made some bad first impressions (besides the obvious). We got back from a party on some random Friday night, and upon seeing a guy and a girl disappear into his room, I spent the next half hour trying to convince people that “she was probably being raped.” My friend Kate basically lived on our floor; she only slept and kept her stuff at her room in the Castillian. She made a passing comment one night about how she didn’t want to walk all the way back there, and I tripped over myself offering her my bed, our extra mattress, etc, even after she said no several times. I write these anecdotes with a smile on my face, out of embarrassment as much as reminiscence. Shortly after that, within the first month, I learned that one can, in fact, be too much of a nice guy, and that when that happens, he’s seen as a pushover, as pathetic, as someone who’s trying way too hard to be liked. I’m still not perfect, but I’m definitely an improved specimen.

I wish I could do high school over, I guess. Not the classes and the living at home stuff, just the social part. There were a lot of people, older and younger, guys and girls, that I really liked, but because of how I behaved around them, they probably didn’t like me back quite as much. I feel like I’ve finally realized some obvious truth that everyone else already knew, and now that I’ve grasped it, I wish I could start over with some people.

A Roman Summer

2008-07-21T22:00:00.001-05:00

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. For details on the last month of my life, check out http://bonjurno.blogspot.com.

Nine Lives

2008-05-16T02:33:00.000-05:00

Mike Reynolds was on his lunch break. He was heading to the deli two blocks over from the office when he was struck by a bus and killed instantly.

Next thing he knew, he was in The Lounge. Nothing fancy, just two simple armchairs separated by a small wooden table. Gray carpet, blank walls, a bare light bulb in the ceiling. He looked around for a moment, disoriented, then it came to him. He was dead. He exhaled slowly, exasperatedly, and ran his hands through his hair. “Fuck me,” he muttered under his breath.

“Hey, watch the language,” said God. Mike looked up. God was seated in one of the armchairs, hands folded in His lap, looking plaintively up at Mike. He’d been there the whole time, or had He? He always seemed to make His presence known while Mike was looking somewhere else.

“Sorry,” said Mike. “It’s just kind of, uh, jarring. You know. The whole death thing. That one caught me kinda off guard. What…what happened, exactly?”

“Bus,” said God. “That one’s pretty common. You people need to learn to look both ways before you cross the street. Rookie mistake. You of all people should know better by now.”

Mike smiled sheepishly. “I’m getting better,” he said. “It’s been a couple of years, right? At least a year and a half.”

“Five months, Mike. You choked on a carrot last October, remember?”

“Right, right, the carrot thing. Totally forgot about that.”

“Take a seat. You’re gonna be here a while.”

Mike pulled out the open chair and sat down across from God. “How long?”

“You got hit by a bus, Mike. Shattered your pelvis, four cracked ribs, a cracked skull, a broken arm. That won’t regenerate right away.”

“I’m supposed to pick Will up from school at three. Think I’ll make it?”

“Yeah, you should be back by then. You’re gonna be sore for a few days, though. You know the drill.”

Mike was about to mention how hungry he was; he’d skipped breakfast that morning because his alarm hadn’t gone off. He realized then that the hunger was gone. So was the headache he’d had on and off since Tuesday and the throbbing of that bruise on his thigh he’d gotten playing backyard soccer with Peter. He felt his cheek. His shaving cut was gone. Dying had its perks, however minor.

“Mike, we need to talk,” said God. “I’m worried about you. That was your sixth life. You’re only forty. It takes most people till at least their fifties to make it that far. Good number of people in their sixties. Look at me.”

Mike reluctantly pulled his gaze from his left knee and looked up at His face. God’s luminescent green eyes, the only feature that Mike could ever remember clearly once he hit dirtside, stared into his. His tone was light enough, almost pleasant, but Mike could hear gravity in every word He spoke.

“What concerns me isn’t just your death count. Six deaths at your age isn’t exactly normal, but it’s not by any means unheard of. I saw a kid recently who was on death number seven before he hit puberty. Of course, he had a bunch of birth problems, so a number of those aren’t his fault. That’s why you all start with nine, to make up for circumstances beyond your control.

"None of your deaths, though, have been anyone’s fault but your own. When you were three, your mom told you not to put that paperclip in the electrical outlet, but you did anyway. In high school, you picked up drag racing. I don’t think either of us needs a recap of that incident. In college, you fell off the roof of a frat house when you were, according to your own explanation, ‘piss drunk.’”

“I’m sorry,” said Mike. “I’m trying. You know I’m trying. I’ve been getting better.”

“Have you?” asked God. “You choked on a carrot and got hit by a bus, Mike. That doesn’t sound like trying to me. It’s recklessness, is what it is.”

Mike said nothing.

“I talked to a woman last week, she’s about your age, it was her first death. Her first, Mike. It was incredible. She died trying to get herself and her eight-month-old baby out of a burning hotel. When she got here, I asked her how she’d gone forty years without dying. I knew the answer, of course, but I wanted to hear her say it. She said she’d made a habit of living, and she didn’t intend on breaking that habit any time soon by doing something stupid.

That’s why I put this whole system into effect, Mike. To negate the permanence of little accidents here and there, yes, but even more, to reward heroism and self-sacrifice with life. I can’t tell her this, of course, but that woman’s going to die twice in the next year and a half, once getting T-boned by a lady running a red light, the other trying to talk a teenager with a gun out of robbing a convenience store.”

“I get it,” said Mike.

“Three deaths in just over eighteen months. If that happens to you, that’s it. Game over, thanks for playing.”

“I get it.”

“Imagine if you only had one, Mike. One life. Imagine how careful you’d have to be, every day, all the time. One false step, one moment of inattention, and you’d be gone forever. One drink too many. Pushing the gas pedal instead of the brake.” God smiled. “Eating a carrot too fast.”

Mike grinned in spite of himself. “Yeah. That…that’d be tough.”

God leaned forward in his chair and put his elbows on the table. “I’m sorry if I’ve been a little harsh on you. But once someone hits the two-thirds mark, I have to take the gloves off, talk some sense into them. There was a guy last week, he broke his arm when he fell off a ladder. He shot himself in the head so he wouldn’t have to wear a cast for two months. He went back fully healed, just like everyone else, but it’s people like that that sometimes make me rethink My whole nine-life policy. You’re not that bad. You said you’re trying. I know you are, I believe you. Just…try harder.”

Mike nodded. “I will.”

“I know you will. You’re a good guy, Mike.”

“Thanks.”

“Ready to go back?”

“Already?”

God chuckled. “I might’ve exaggerated your injuries a little bit. I was trying to scare you. It work?”

“Yes, sir, it definitely did.”

They both stood up. God extended His hand and Mike shook it.

“Until we meet again, Mike. No matter how careful you are, you know we’ll meet again.”

“Yeah.”

“Tell your wife and kids I love them.”

“They don’t know?”

God looked him in the eye again. “A little reminder every now and then can’t hurt.”

“Right.” Mike closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he was lying in a hospital bed.

My Philosophy Paper

2008-04-08T13:07:00.000-05:00

John Locke explains his view of the purpose of government in Chapter IX of his Second Treatise of Government. In the preceding chapters, he has set up his thesis by describing the state of mankind in the state of nature, outside of any kind of established law. Man possesses a liberty that allows him to perform any action that is in accordance with the natural law. This natural law has been given to him by his Creator, and as such, he knows it without having to be taught. Those who live according to the natural law “may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another” (9). In other words, if every man abides by this law, then his livelihood is safe, and he will never come into conflict with his neighbors.

However, there exist men who purposely violate the natural law for their own benefit. One who attempts to take the life or property of another without his permission has entered into a state of war with that person. Being in a state of war requires someone to constantly be on his guard, taking active measures to protect himself and his loved ones from those out to get him. Since the transgressor poses a threat to everyone in the state of nature, everyone has the power to punish him. The state of war is undesirable for obvious reasons; it requires substantial time and effort that keeps a man from pursuing his own ends. Thus, men establish ruling bodies to which they give their power of punishment in order to avoid this inconvenience.

Locke’s system of government, then, is an institution established with the full consent of the people, and its only purpose is to protect the private property of its citizens. He describes the full extent of governmental authority – first, the state has an established, settled, known law. Second, the state has at its disposal a neutral judge to resolve conflicts between citizens. Third, a government can only use its power to enforce these known laws. Finally, the government cannot pass laws whose end is anything other than the “peace, safety, and public good” (68) of the people.

Under Locke’s so-called “nightwatchman state,” the two greatest advantages that the people at large hold over the government are their stash of private property and the power of their consent. Both of these are indispensable towards maintaining their liberty by keeping the government in check. Some argue that Locke’s government is too limited, but his is a government that serves the people. As citizens hand more of their personal authority over to it, they begin to serve it more than it serves them. The result is a society of slaves.

The first part of Locke’s Theory of Private Property is relevant here. Regarding self-ownership, he asserts in Chapter V that a man owns himself and anything to which he has put his hand. If he tills a piece of land, then he ought to be the proper owner of whatever grows. Just as God created man and therefore owns him, man too can justifiably own anything that he creates. The final product of a man’s labor, then, be it food, clothing, intellectual property, or the money he receives for any of these, belongs to him and him alone. Private property is a God-given right, and government has no authority to commandeer it without its owner’s express consent. The loss of it leads to an increased reliance on the state.

The right of consent follows logically enough from the right of private property. The term “consent” is generally used with regard to two parties of unequal status – a higher power grants consent to lower power. A professor consents to let a student miss a day of class. A manager consents to let his employees wear jeans on Fridays. The people consent to let their government punish wrongdoers among them. This relationship works because the dominant party has something that the submissive party needs. A student relies on his professor for knowledge, an employee relies on his manager for money, and a government relies on the people for land, money, equipment, etc.

The balance of power shifts when the lower power no longer needs what the higher power has to offer. A student who has (or thinks he has) sufficient knowledge no longer cares about skipping class. An employee with enough money to retire doesn’t give much thought to the dress code anymore. A government with enough property to sustain itself no longer requires the consent of the people to pass and enforce laws that the people are still obliged to follow. In this case, in fact, an individual no longer has any consent to really provide – if he gives the government his land and his weekly earnings, then he has no means to support himself if he wants to break away. Since the government started off with no property at all, it must have acquired it consensually, little by little.

Locke’s minimalist government, then, ensures that as long as people hold private property and keep tabs on how much of their authority they give away, they won’t find themselves at the mercy of an all-powerful regime. At this point, as a bit of a side note, it seems appropriate to mention that Locke’s minimalist government has more authority than one might think. Take, for example, substances like heroin and cocaine. It seems that under Locke’s system, a person has the right to choose what he puts into his own body; government is powerless to stop him.

However, it is no small secret that many longtime users of such addicting drugs will end up killing themselves through an overdose. Locke previously posited that since every man is the property of his Creator, he does not possess the authority to take his own life. By endangering his life with a cocaine habit, a man is, in a sense, in a state of war with himself. Therefore, the government has every right to intervene. Locke’s supporters might also respond to the drug argument by introducing the addict’s wife and children into the picture. They are probably just as affected by their loved one’s habit as he is, and a government has the responsibility to care for every single one of its citizens. Government intervention benefits them, as well.

Let’s return now to Locke’s critics, those who consider his form of government to be too limited. From Locke’s perspective, society exists to remove the distractions that might prevent a person’s life from taking its natural course. A government should not actively benefit its citizens as much as remove the prospect of harm from their daily lives. The merits of this system have been demonstrated, but the alternate point of view deserves some consideration. Locke’s critics believe that government should not be a passive entity that protects its citizens from harm that may or may not come in the state of nature. Rather, it should be a progressive, proactive institution whose function is to better the lives of those who have put it into power. If a man gives up his state of absolute freedom to take part in society, should he not receive more than protection against only the most basic of worries? His government should satisfy his every need, not just remove inconvenience.

To get a clear picture of the opposite view, of a state in which the governing body holds absolute authority over its citizens, examine the society proposed by Socrates in Book V of Plato’s Republic. Let’s examine his government’s position on a single issue, a man’s freedom to marry and procreate. In Socrates’ society, the government has enacted a breeding policy to ensure optimal results for each generation. Breeding “festivals” held at certain intervals throughout the year pronounce random pairings, chosen by drawing lots, as married couples for the duration of sexual intercourse. Certain males viewed by the ruling committee as the most admirable may have four or five partners during the festival so that their genes are more widely disseminated.

The resultant children are taken away from their birth mothers and raised together so that neither parent nor child knows who their blood relatives are. Children born within seven to ten months of each other are raised together and prohibited from copulating with each other in the future to prevent incest. A certain number of guardians are appointed to each group of children to educate them and make them into model citizens. Locke’s opponents would perhaps be more comfortable with this government that takes the arduous responsibility of rearing a child out of an everyday citizen’s hands.

Now, granted, Socrates’ society has taken the role of government to the opposite extreme. Proponents of a more involved government, especially in modern times, would still probably consider a federal breeding program to be a bit on the radical side. However, examining such an absurd example allows one to more easily assess the flaws of models with similar bases. The more power a person gives to the government, the less power he holds for himself, for better or for worse. Individual choice and personal liberty decrease as the government’s power increases. Locke has already described the states of nature and war, states without government that leave individuals to fend for themselves. This state is equally undesirable; Locke’s opponents would surely prefer even Locke’s minimalist government to anarchy.

At the end of the day, the basic issue is how much personal liberty someone is willing to sacrifice for the sake of safety, security, and, yes, convenience. A person has fewer responsibilities and, thus, fewer concerns as he gives his government more authority, but are not the choices men make and the rationale behind them the distinguishing characteristic of human beings? From a Lockian perspective, one could argue that God placed mankind on the earth without any kind of government, implying that He intended for him to live entirely without one. Unfortunately, dissidents from the natural law make some form of government necessary so that a man’s concerns can extend beyond his most basic needs.

Even without the invocation of God, though, a person’s free will and personal liberties are indispensable. The purpose of Locke’s government extends no further than, again, “peace, safety, and public good” (68) with its adherents’ complete consent. This seems more logical and fulfilling than an overbearing, interfering regime bent on self-optimization.

Why I Write

2008-04-07T16:25:00.002-05:00

I feel like I’ve been going through a bout of writer’s block lately. I’ll sit down to write a short story or a blog entry or something and end up discarding it after half a page or so. To combat this, I’ve set a goal for myself – every day this week, I’m going to sit down and whip out 650-700 words, one single-spaced page. Call it a way to get the creative juices flowing again. I’m not expecting brilliance, but maybe I’ll come up with a seed that I can turn into something worthwhile later on.

A logical question is why I feel this need to get myself back on track, writing-wise. Long story short, I enjoy it. I like putting my thoughts down on paper, organizing them, giving them eloquence. It always takes me a while to get started (the first page of an essay usually takes about three times as long to write as any of the succeeding ones), but once I fall into a groove, I just plain lose track of time. I become absorbed in the words I’ve written, whether what I’ve just written is any good, how I can make it better, where, if anywhere, I’m going with it, etc.

Example: I had to write a short story for my creative writing class a few weeks ago. I started and abandoned two stories in the week leading up to the due date because I just wasn’t feeling them. The story was due at two p.m. on a Wednesday; my third attempt, the one I ended up turning in, I started late Monday night. I only have one class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which basically gave me the entire day to produce and proofread a fifteen-pager. That Tuesday, I wrote from about 11:30 in the morning to midnight solid, minus two short breaks for lunch and dinner. Not only did I not begrudge the amount of time I spent on this thing, I actively enjoyed it – finishing, I wished I had more to say and more time to say it. There are very few activities that I can just fall into like this without getting restless or distracted. I almost feel an obligation to myself to pursue it as much as possible.

The last time I felt prolific as a writer was when I had a Xanga during my sophomore and junior years of high school. I updated it pretty consistently, at least once a week, usually more. My material, however, left something to be desired – it didn’t really hit me until about a year after I gave it up what an unmitigated clusterfuck it was. Everything that a normal person would write in a private diary, I published on the Internet, blissfully unaware of the hole I dug deeper with each entry. I cursed people out by name, I bitched about my acne, about how I didn’t have a girlfriend, about how lonely I was because no one ever called me, etc. I can’t believe anyone could write so naively about such personal subject matter, let alone me, but then, I can’t believe I did a lot of the stuff that I did during high school.

My point is that I enjoy writing, but I equally enjoy people reading what I write. George Orwell was right – the number one reason that writers do what they do is sheer egoism. I could have just vented my problems into some secret Microsoft Word file and never looked at them again, but at the time, I felt that everything I had to say was worth sharing with the world. I’d say I’m better now, but I’m not. I’m just wiser. I’m more discerning about what I can post here and what I should probably keep private. My egoism is probably best evidenced by my project for this week. It’d be easier to just blather about some issues that have been on my mind lately in a spiral notebook or something, but it seems like a waste to let a week’s worth of work go unseen by anyone except me.

I already have some topics in mind for my next couple self-mandated assignments, which itself is half the battle. The fact that I’m looking forward to sitting down tomorrow and starting my next “column,” if you want to call it that, gives me hope that I might actually stick with it. I’m a very bad self-motivator, as anyone who knows me can attest. I’m well past my quota for the day, so I’m off to start a philosophy essay about how Communism is a worthy ideal in theory if not in practice. Reference number five in my previous post. Wish me luck.

Things That Make Me Feel Like a College Student

2008-04-07T03:05:00.000-05:00

Things that make me feel like a college student:

1. Buying milk from CVS and carrying it home in a plastic shopping bag
2. Drinking non-coffee liquids out of a coffee mug
3. Taking a shower at two in the morning
4. Riding the bus with my backpack in my lap
5. Reading the Communist Manifesto
6. Eating in restaurants back home and wondering for a split second why no one else in there is my age
7. Sleeping for four hours when I meant to sleep for one. One and a half, tops.
8. Wearing a fedora
9. Taking my shirt off upon entering my dorm room for no particular reason

...and more as I happen to think of them.

The Night I Met You

2008-02-23T00:04:00.001-06:00

To practice fiction writing, I had the idea to take snippets from movies or TV shows and turn them into short stories. I already have dialogue and characters, all I have to do is make it read well. My first project is one of my all-time favorite scenes from LOST. This comes from the Season 3 episode "Greatest Hits." The clip is here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=5bGiJ-9DwWk

I was walking through the wreckage. Groups huddled here and there around makeshift campfires. Everyone’s adrenaline had finally worn off, and people just looked tired more than anything else. Scanning their faces, I saw no fear, no pain, not even apprehension, just fatigue. Some of these people probably knew each other. Husbands were probably reassuring their wives that rescue was on the way, holding them close, thanking God for their own survival. It would have been nice to have someone to curl up to like that, but I wasn’t jealous. Settling down with someone had never been my style. Anyway, I wasn’t the only loner; there were plenty of people sitting by themselves, staring into the fire, rubbing cuts and bruises absentmindedly. I was looking around to confirm that I wasn’t alone in being alone when I saw her.

She was beautiful. Blonde, about my height, probably three times as wide due to the almost perfect semicircle that arched from below her breasts to her waist. The pregnancy was important because it reassured me that my attraction to her wasn’t sexual. She was also alone, looking for a place to turn in for the night. I watched her select a patch of sand sheltered by part of the wall of the main cabin and suddenly realized that I was walking towards her. It didn’t hit me until that moment how much I wanted to talk to someone. I hesitated for a moment, pulled back the hood of my jacket, ran my hand through my hair, picked up an airplane blanket at my feet. I smiled and raised my hand in a half wave as I reached her.

“Hiya,” I said. I held out my opening line. “Do you want a blanket?”

She looked up at me and smiled. “Oh, thanks. I got one.” There it was, on her other side. Of course. Stupid.

I kept my arms extended, though. “Well, you’re warming for two. Take mine.”

She kept looking at me for a second, then down at her feet, a gesture of concession. “Thank you.” She reached out to take it. Our fingers brushed.

I sat down beside her and rubbed my hands together, to stall for time as much as to warm my fingers. Humor. Go with humor. “So, first plane crash?”

“What gave it away?”

“Ah, you can always spot the newbies.” She laughed, and because she laughed, I did, too. Whatever initial awkwardness or tension she might have felt had dissipated into the night. We were together, had survived a colossally rare event together, and we were able to laugh about it. It seemed to me that that was all that mattered. “We’re gonna be okay, you know.”

Her smile faded. “Are we?” An honest question.

“We’re alive,” I told her. “We’re on a beautiful island. We’ll sleep under the stars, and before you know it, the helicopters’ll come and take us home.”

“You really think they’ll find us?”

It was something that had to be on everyone’s mind, at least subconsciously. Of course I had no way of knowing if they were on their way, if they even knew where to look, but I’m sure no one believed that we wouldn’t be rescued immediately. Rescue was an expectation, not a hope. “Well, yeah, why wouldn’t they?”

I could tell by her expression that we shared the same optimism, that she had been looking for someone to confirm it. She made eye contact with me. “Thanks.”

“I’m Charlie.” I held out my hand.

“I’m Claire.” She shook it. My hands were calloused from decades of guitar playing. Hers were soft. “Nice to meet you, Charlie.”

We pulled our hands back but I kept looking at her. She had blue eyes. “It’s nice to meet you,” I said.

The Loner

2008-02-07T17:16:00.001-06:00

Whenever I see people sitting by themselves, at lunch, in coffee shops, in the Quad, whatever, I don’t think twice about it. Sometimes they have a book – they’re studying, I shouldn’t bother them. Even if they don’t, if they’re just sitting there, it’s not really notable. Everyone needs some alone time now and then. When I’m by myself in public, though, I feel like people are watching me. “Why doesn’t he have friends?” they must be thinking. “What a freak.” They think I’m sad and lonely, even if I’m not.

Part of it could be my neutral facial expression. I’ve noticed it when I look in the mirror in the morning. When I’m not smiling or laughing, I look pretty serious. Grim, even. My eyes are narrow and slit, my mouth a tight line. I’m looking at it now in the mirror over the couch. Nothing’s wrong; I’m in a pretty good mood, actually, truth be told. It’s gorgeous out, I’m done with homework (minus some preliminaries for an open-book Spanish quiz tomorrow), I just had an impromptu reminiscence session about last year’s B2 in the Quad with some friends, and there’s a new episode of Lost (!!!) on tonight. Doesn’t get much better than that. My face has no business looking like it does. Maybe if I widened my eyes and parted my lips a little. Then it wouldn’t look like someone just died while I’m just enjoying a cup of coffee. Call it a project to work on.

Still, there’s something about that guy sitting by himself in a room full of different groups of friends. People talking probably don’t give it a second thought, but that guy feels like he’s in the spotlight. The solo artist in a room full of cliques. I don’t like feeling that way, so I try to surround myself with friends wherever I go. It’s just dinner, my body needs sustenance. It’s science. For the longest time, though, I wouldn’t go anywhere in Austin by myself. I’d call three, four people without success before resigning myself to going to Wendy’s alone. It’s chicken nuggets at 1 a.m., not the social event of the season. I didn’t get that till last semester.

It’s not what I think or what other people think; it’s what I think other people are thinking as I plop down in a booth by myself. They must think that I look lonely, they must think I wish I had friends to enjoy my bagel and coffee with. Do I? Sure. I think everyone prefers company to solitude. Whenever I see someone glance over at me, I want to explain that I’m just looking for a quiet place to read, that I’m grabbing a snack before a meeting, that Danny and Sean and Tim are all in class right now. I don’t care, and they don’t care, but I think they care, and that makes all the difference. That’s why I feel as awkward as I do.

No worries. I’ll learn to deal with it.

The Middle

2007-11-28T02:56:00.000-06:00

If there’s one song that pretty much everyone from my generation knows, it’s Jimmy Eat World’s “The Middle.” It got a lot of radio play when it first came out, and I’ll still hear it every once in a while, but more than that, it’s one of those pick-me-p songs that I can’t help but be in a good mood after listening to it. I’ve heard that song more times than I care to count, but it never gets old. I was listening to it tonight, and I started thinking about how some really great moments of my life have had that song playing in the background. I’m not gonna launch into a greatest hits, listing off the best moments I’ve ever had in my entire life, but these are some definite moments where I sat back for a second, looked around, and consciously thought, “Huh…this is kind of cool.”

Summer 2002, I went to a summer camp in Colorado called Camp Cheley. I stayed in the Haiyaha unit, which was for guys ages 14-17. We all got to be pretty close because we knew not to step on each others’ toes – we were all living together in pretty close quarters for about a month, so making enemies wasn’t the best idea. In the last week, my cabin was assigned bathouse duty, just normal stuff, sweeping, rinsing out the showers, etc. Someone had a stereo, and he started playing DJ as we went to work. He picked out a couple of his personal favorites, stuff that a few people knew, but then “The Middle” came on. Everyone perked up – I can’t explain it. By that point, we were all in the typical summer camp “I love everyone!” mindset, so that didn’t hurt. We all started singing along (everyone knew the words, of course) and playing guitars on our brooms. In that moment, we were all united. Common task that no one really wanted to do, singing the same song, with a big circle of friends. Male bonding at its finest.

Summer 2005, again at a summer camp, this time YMCA Camp Grady Spruce in Possum Kingdom. It was the last Saturday of camp, the last batch of campers had left that morning, so it was just the counselors in the dining hall for lunch that afternoon. Same situation as with Cheley – we’d all been with each other all summer, making it a point to legitimately make friends and include everyone. I plugged my iPod into the giant stereo system and started blasting the first thing I found as loud as I could. As we ate, people would get up and select the next song. Sure enough, someone put on “The Middle.” We were done eating by that point, so we were just milling around, avoiding the last bits of work we had to do before we could go home. We were all really excited and energized already – the fucking kids were gone, our job was all but done, and we could finally just chill and all be together for the last time. There wasn’t too much of a reaction to the song beyond a general nod of approval and a couple grins, but nothing else was really needed. That lunch, in the last couple days of July, was the first time that we had been able to hang out as a group without anything to do since the first group of campers came in May. Can’t really describe the feeling that we all had, looking around at each other, satisfied knowing that our work was finally (!) done. All we had was sandwiches and chips, but that was one of the best lunches I’d had in a long time.

And then we come to tonight. This one’s a bit more subdued, a bit more random than the others. We were sitting in the Blobby (the Blanton lobby), just like every other night, doing homework but not really doing homework, just like every other night, making fun of each other, just like every other night, etc. Jackie put on “The Middle,” and again, there was that general consensus that you just can’t not like this song (think about it). I looked around at everyone sitting there, there were probably ten people in all, and I was struck with this feeling of contentment. Not happiness, which can be pretty fleeting when something else comes along to hit you in the face, but contentment. Not only did I know everyone’s name, which is rarer than I’d like to admit, but I’ve had extensive conversations with everyone that was sitting there. I was comfortable, I fit in, I belonged. Everyone in that circle, I felt like I could randomly call on a weekday afternoon to see if they wanted to grab lunch or coffee, just for the hell of it. I’ve had a lot of ups and downs in the past few weeks, long story there, so it was kind of nice to realize that I still have this group that I see, talk to, and laugh with pretty much every day. A more subdued kind of contentment than the other examples, yes, but contentment nonetheless. Every once in a while, it’s the little things that get to you.

My Economics Paper

2007-11-19T02:50:00.001-06:00

As obvious as it sounds, economic principles are usually only used when studying the economy, past, present, and future. These principles were created for the specific purpose of describing how the economy works, both in theory and in practice, so it’s only natural that this should be their main application. However, with a wider scope, it’s possible to see that these economic goals, policies, and theories can relate to common events in everyday life. To view the average person’s daily routine through the lens of an economist might seem unusual, but a careful analysis results in a better understanding of the almost unconscious process of human interaction. In their book Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner define economics as “…at root, the study of incentives: how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing” (16).

The arguable cornerstone of economics is the principle of supply and demand. When the supply of a product is low and the demand for it is high, a vendor can charge whatever price he wishes for the good in question. When the supply is high and the demand is low, he doesn’t quite have this freedom. The basic principle here is that a good is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it; this can potentially dictate a price substantially higher than the good’s retail value.

For example, I was once in a large lecture class that required its students to bring blue books for every exam. During the first exam of the semester, a student entered the room five minutes into the exam, sat next to me, and promptly realized that he had forgotten to buy a blue book. Running off to buy one would take at least ten minutes, time that he didn’t have to spare. The supply of spare blue books was extremely limited, and his demand for one was almost off the charts – the exam was worth thirty percent of the final grade. Smiling to myself, I realized that anyone who happened to have an extra blue book in his backpack could have named any price that this student would be obliged to pay.

Here, the concept of inflation comes into play. The basic gist of inflation is that the cost of a certain good fluctuates as a result of outside circumstances – it takes more or less money to acquire the same product. In the economy, the price of imported cars in dollars, for example, rises or falls based on the exchange rate of the currency between the two countries. Similarly, in real life, people often find that it suddenly requires more effort to obtain the same result. A young man trying to woo a girl finds that paying her a compliment and buying her a cup of coffee gets him a kiss on the cheek at the end of the night. One night, after the compliment and the coffee, she gives him a hug and leaves. The following night, he takes her to dinner at an expensive restaurant and takes her dancing afterward. Sure enough, at the end of the night, he gets his kiss. Based on the progression of the relationship, a kiss on the cheek costs more.

In the above example, the price of a blue book (normally just thirty-nine cents) has skyrocketed because of the unfortunate student’s immediate need for the good. Three hours before the exam, the student would be crazy to buy a blue book for any more than retail price. During crunch time, however, with forty-five minutes left in the exam and no blank blue book in sight, the value of the good begins to inflate exponentially. Again, the value of a good is whatever the person is willing to pay for it. Let’s say that the entrepreneurial merchant’s asking price for his extra blue book is twenty dollars. The (admittedly disgruntled) student wouldn’t be paying that amount of money for eight sheets of paper stapled together; he’d be paying for his only option for salvaging his grade in the class. An “A” instead of a “C” in a class is of inestimable value, but twenty dollars seems like a good start.

Now, the obvious objection to this situation is that no good person would corner someone into this type of deal just to make a little bit of extra cash. While it wouldn’t surprise me if something akin to this situation has happened at least once, it’s certainly not the common response. I pose the following question: why? If economics is the study of incentives, and someone has both the means and the opportunity to make a quick buck, why wouldn’t he? It’s a bit dodgy, ethically speaking, but ethics aren’t usually a major factor in strictly businesslike transactions. There must be some other reason that this person with an extra blue book is more inclined to hand it over with a wink and a smile than to make the other person reach for his wallet.

To answer this question, I apply the principle of the balance of payments – regarding trade, a country wants to export as many goods as it can while simultaneously importing as few goods as possible. Just as a countries trade goods on a massive scale, people trade goods and services with those around them on a daily basis. A man offers a soda from his refrigerator to his neighbor. A student lets a classmate copy her notes. A girl moves her friend’s car out of a no-parking zone before the car gets towed. The societal norm seems to be that money doesn’t change hands during such personal interchanges; a person will do his friend a favor with the implication that the favor will be reciprocated later.

I would therefore like to propose the theory that in a group of close friends, especially in communal living environments like dormitories, doing favors for one another acts as the “currency” of the relationship. If someone does a small favor for me, I “owe” him one small favor. If I do a big favor for someone, he “owes” me either one big favor or several small favors. This system is obviously much more flexible than the dollar system, but on the whole, it seems to consistently match the daily interactions of acquaintances. As a side note, it is theoretically possible for one to live his life in a “closed” economy, that is, a completely self-sufficient person who doesn’t rely on anyone around him for anything, but this usually doesn’t last very long. Everyone requires someone else’s help at one point or another. We will therefore work with the model of an open market.

For example, say that John and Steve go out to lunch. John has forgotten his wallet, so Steve pays for the entire meal. Instead of reimbursing Steve with the exact dollar amount as soon as possible, John will probably just pick up the check the next time he and Steve eat together. Steve did a favor for John (“exporting” his good will), and later, he received one in return (“importing” John’s good will). The transaction is complete. Just as with national trade, it is better for one’s net exports to be positive than negative. A person who constantly does favors for his friends without asking for repayment for its own sake has a trade surplus, a useful stock that he can take advantage of should the need arise. A person who constantly asks his friends for goods and services without repaying them has a trade deficit; his friends will likely see him as a “moocher” and be less inclined to do favors for him in the future.

Booms and slumps can be explained by a person’s attitude over a given period of time. A student who aces two tests and receives an acceptance letter from the graduate school of his choice in the same day is likely to be in a pretty good mood – he’d probably be willing to grab his roommate’s laundry from the dryer before it gets stolen or buy a round of drinks on a Friday night. By amassing these favors while in his positive emotional state, he’s going through a boom. Conversely, a student who has three midterms and a research paper all due in a single week will probably turn to his friends more than once in order to make it through. Borrowing notes from someone here, his roommate bringing him dinner there – the deficit builds up pretty quickly. He’s going through a slight slump. Both of these are common, and in the long run, the booms and slumps of a hectic college student’s life tend to balance each other out.

Returning to the above example, then, a student won’t charge his classmate twenty dollars for a blue book because he wants to retain his ability to receive a favor in the future. A person’s current “trade status” is not necessarily private information. What favors he does, for whom, and how often are all pretty common information just through gossip and small talk among his friends. The person who sells his classmate a blue book for twenty dollars damages his reputation considerably in the process. News of this irregularity will spread, and his friends will stop asking him for favors for fear of what he will ask in return. Since his friends aren’t asking him for any favors, in turn, they feel less obligated to do favors for him. Isolation ensues. Though this man’s actions are perfectly logical in an economic sense, they demonstrate what kind of deals he has the habit of making, lowering the chance of future interactions.

The quote from Levitt and Dubner makes it a point to distinguish wants from needs. Three hours before the test, the student wanted a blue book. Five minutes into it, he needs one. While it is certainly unjust and irregular to charge twenty dollars for something he so desperately needs, it might not be quite as unjust to overcharge for a nonessential good. For example, in college towns, fast food restaurants close their dining areas at midnight but keep the drive-through lane open all night long. However, the restaurants don’t serve food to people who walk through the lane – since many college students don’t have cars, this is a bit of a setback. A student with a car is in the position to make a little bit of money for himself. He can park his car in the parking lot with a sign in the passenger’s window that says, “I will drive you through for five dollars.” At one or two o’clock on a Friday night, he’s likely to have several (quite possibly inebriated) takers. Again, the price that someone is willing to pay for a cheeseburger has inflated because of his mental state and the lack of other options.

The difference between the two situations is the distinction between necessity and desire. Charging twenty dollars so that someone can pass an exam might as well be stealing, since the student has no other options besides paying the asking price. With the fast food example, though, the buyer makes the conscious choice to pay the five-dollar “transportation fee.” He doesn’t “need” a cheeseburger like the student needs the blue book, so there can be little comparison between the two.

Examining real life situations from an economic perspective provides an interesting view on human nature, both psychologically and sociologically. The study of the average person’s incentives, needs, and the lengths to which he will go to obtain these needs is a very practical use of time. A rational, unbiased, fresh perspective on the unconscious happenings of everyday life can be quite educational and can significantly increase the quality of one’s social life.

Nicknames

2007-11-15T00:41:00.000-06:00

I’m taking a break (i.e. procrastinating) from my philosophy paper, but I’m still in a writing mood, so I thought I’d ramble on here for a while. For no reason at all, the topic of nicknames came to mind. Someone’s real name doesn’t matter that much beyond it being the main method of identification (if my name’s Matt or Will or John, it doesn’t change who I am at all), but a nickname can define someone as a certain personality type or even prod them to act in certain ways. I think that a nickname’s a very important part of someone’s identity – if it catches on, it sticks with you for quite a while. Most people know that you can’t give yourself a nickname. Someone has to come up with one, and it has to fit the person to be common enough for everyday use. I’ve had my fair share of nicknames, some good, some bad.

FRODO – this came about during my first few years at Cistercian. I was one of the shorter kids in the class, and I had what I like to consider an affably eccentric personality. This was before the years of tests, papers, and teenage hormones killed my spirit. A big staple of Cistercian is that sixth grade English consists pretty much solely of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. When it came to Tolkien, everyone at Cistercian knew their shit, whether they wanted to or not. A guy in the class above me (either Nick Christensen or Mason Reeves, can’t remember) nicknamed me Frodo because of my height, and for whatever reason, it stuck. Everyone at CPS, even the high schoolers who normally wouldn’t bother to look in my direction, knew me as Frodo. Between classes, at football games, whatever, I’d hear someone shout “Hey, Frodo!” and turn to see someone sprinting from the other side of the hallway to say hey. It was a term of endearment more than anything else. I eventually grew out of it as our class stopped being the low men on the totem pole, but I wonder how many CPS graduates from the classes of ’99, ’00, ’01 occasionally think, “Whatever happened to that Frodo kid?”

JONESY – not too much of a story here. My high school nickname. My last name’s Jones, so it’s only fitting. I just want to say, though, that during junior and senior year, I’d guess that a good portion of people I hung out with on a daily basis didn’t know my first name.

SHEETS – ah, yes, the fucking infamous Sheets story. It’s ubiquitous in Austin and it’s apparently even spread back to Dallas and all over the country with various high school friends of mine who’ve gone on to college. I’m not gonna tell the whole story for privacy reasons, as there may or may not have been certain illegal activities involved, but suffice it to say that this one stuck in a big way. During my freshman year of college, pretty much everyone in the Quad knew me only as Sheets, due in no small part to Mr. David Zummo and Mr. Saul Elbein. The nickname isn’t as common this year as it was last year, but it’s something that I’m pretty sure I’ll never live down completely. I compare being Sheets to being Michael Bolton from Office Space – everyone has a joke to make, and not one of them is original (or funny).

KIDDO – this one’s used exclusively by the Broccoli Project, the Plan II theater group that I’m in. My friend Brandan calls someone “kiddo” when she can’t remember his real name, so that’s how it started, but even when she finally learned it, she kept calling me Kiddo because she said it fit. Fair enough. A nickname’s a great way to know you belong to a group, and that’s what happened with Broccoli. When I meet people at auditions or shows, I don’t even bother introducing myself as Matt. I just hold out my hand and go, “Hey, I’m Kiddo, nice to meet you,” and everyone around me who knows me nods in approval. They’d correct me immediately if I said anything else. This one’s still going strong, and I don’t see it dying out in the foreseeable future, at least with this crowd.

Just something I was thinking about while I was sitting outside. Even if it’s completely pointless, it’s fun to write stuff like this for posterity. Twenty years from now, I’ll be flipping around on my computer (or whatever the equivalent is by then), find this, and think, “Holy shit, I completely forgot about the whole Frodo thing.” Good times, good times.

There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.

2007-10-30T11:26:00.000-06:00

A couple of years ago, on a Saturday afternoon, I was watching an episode of Lost that I had Tivo’ed from the week before. I think it was the one where Michael killed Ana Lucia and Libby, because I remember that I was really into it – it was just getting good. I had been interrupted three or four times already, by my mom asking me to take my laundry upstairs or my dad showing me a newspaper article, stuff like that, so I was a bit perturbed already. It was in the last five minutes when my sister yelled “Hey, Matt! Come look at this!” I was so enraged that I couldn’t get forty-five minutes to myself that I finally just shut it off and said out loud, “Screw it, I’ll just watch it later, I guess. WHAT?” She meekly handed me a packet we had just gotten in the mail from Plan II, and we all know what a big packet instead of a dinky white envelope means. My only response was, “…oh.”

Whatever I do, I’ve noticed that I have the tendency to try to make it an experience instead of just another action, especially when it comes to media. I prefer watching movies in a dark room on my laptop with my headphones in – I can shut out the outside world, so the only thing that my senses can possibly perceive is the movie itself. I get into it more, I engage myself more fully when there are no distractions to pull me away. I think my roommate thinks that I’m antisocial because when I’m in the room, I usually have my headphones in playing music full blast instead of having a conversation for the sake of having a conversation. I do that a lot when I listen to music. I’ll lie in bed with my iPod, shut my eyes, crank it up, and just enjoy. I can’t keep one earbud in as background music while I’m having a conversation or whatever, because I usually end up getting caught up in a guitar solo and tuning out the person I’m talking to. Not a great conversational skill.

For the last couple years, I’ve tried to live by a maxim that I came up with – “Do what you’re doing.” If you’re talking with someone, then talk with him and pay attention, don’t wonder what’s for dinner. If you’re reading a book, don’t stop every couple of paragraphs to get a drink of water or look around. If you’re writing, don’t check Facebook every five minutes. It loses its flow, it doesn’t mean as much when you don’t just get into it and enjoy it for all it’s worth. I came up with this idea during the summer after my junior year of high school when our class went to Europe for three weeks. We went to Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, and everywhere worth going to in Italy, among other places – not to be cliché, but it was the kind of trip you only get the chance to do once. All around me, though, all I heard was bitching about the food not being good enough, the rules were too strict, the bus was too cramped, etc, etc. I just wanted to tell everyone to chill the fuck out. Maybe listening to a song you’ve heard a million times isn’t an experience, but touring the Sistine Chapel sure as hell is. Pay attention, look at the murals and stuff, and stop complaining that you think someone stole one of your T-shirts. You’re here, you chose to be here, you can’t change it, so you’re only hurting yourself by not fully engaging in your surroundings.

I’ve found that the opposite of this is also true – if you don’t want to be somewhere, then don’t be there. Obviously, everyone is forced to deal with certain unpleasantness that pops up occasionally, but it’s easy enough to disengage mentally, if not physically. If I’m in a really boring class, for example, I’ll usually just halfheartedly scribble down whatever the professor is saying while I’m off in my own little world. Not paying attention makes the time go faster. This is obviously easier when the situation has a definite endpoint – a fifty-minute class period, for example, or the guy that lives across the hall that you absolutely hate deciding to sit across from you at dinner. Even if it seems like it’ll never end, it will, and you know when it will. Almost anything’s bearable for a predefined period of time.

I just seem to take more enjoyment out of life when I, as I said, do what it is that I’m doing. I take more away from it when I’m able to completely immerse myself in a movie or a TV show or a song or a conversation. It just seems like a waste of time, otherwise. Yeah, I spent three hours of my life reading this book, but I didn’t understand any of it because I wasn’t paying attention. I can either spend more time rereading it, or I can just call it a loss and move on. Neither of those options is really appealing. Hence, if you see me sprawled out in the Quad with my nose buried in book, don’t come up to me and ask me how I’m doing because you haven’t seen me for three hours. Unless your name is Tim. I always have time for you, sweetcheeks:)

Life barrels on like a runaway train.

2007-10-29T03:17:00.000-06:00

I went back home for my high school’s homecoming this weekend. It was an interesting experience. Three guys from our class showed up, and one of them still lives in Dallas, anyway. I didn’t talk to either of them longer than the obligatory handshake and pleasantries. It’s not that we don’t like each other, it just seems like we didn’t really have anything to say. Only a couple guys from the class of ’07, also, and nobody from ’05. Alums that I knew were few and far between. I ended up hanging out with Br. Stephen and Br. Philip the entire time. It was fun, but it made for some interesting musing once I got home.

It wasn’t that I felt out of place, exactly; after all the time I spent there, I don’t think I could ever feel like a stranger at Cistercian. I felt like an outsider. I left and went to college, I’ve been doing my own shit for the last year and a half, but things back there kept on the same way they always have. Guys that were in seventh, eighth, ninth grade while I was there are the top dogs now, and teachers treat them just like they treated us senior year – as friends more than students. It’ll eventually cycle out to where I don’t know any students at the school at all, by which point all but the most dedicated teachers will have left, too. I didn’t feel anything like this when I went to homecoming last year, but I think it’s because it was too fresh – I’d really only been gone for about a month and a half, so Cistercian still felt like home just as much as it always had. Last year, chilling in the stands and cheering for the team, I felt like I’d never really left. Not the same this year, though.

During sophomore year, it seems like I’ve been gone long enough to feel distant from everyone there, but I haven’t been gone long enough quite yet to feel nostalgic about my time there. I made a pass around campus, hit up the senior classrooms and the lunchroom and the pub, but it didn’t bring back that many memories that I don’t call up on a daily basis. That’s it – I felt distant, detached, somehow. I was watching the same shit that always happened, chatting with teachers, hitting on girls, buying popcorn, stuff that I did a million times, except it wasn’t mine anymore. I felt like there wasn’t much of a point in being there. I mean, yeah, it was good seeing everyone, but it only made me think about how much I’ve changed since I graduated and came to college. I’m a completely different person than I was in August 2006, there’s no doubt about that. It just didn’t feel like I’d had enough distance since senior year to appreciate it purely for nostalgic value. I was trying to fall back into my old role of actually being a Cistercian student, which didn’t work at all. I can’t do that anymore, and I learned that.

Before the game, I went to Ball’s Burgers to get a plate of nachos. Good shit, I can’t finish a full plate. On my way out, I ran into two kids wearing Cistercian t-shirts. I struck up a conversation, turns out they’re eighth graders this year. I told them I was a sophomore in college, pointed to my Texas sweatshirt, and their jaws dropped. I was a god, I was a friggin’ college student, and here I was, talking about E-Lab and Art tests. They were hanging on to my every word, something that hasn’t happened to me in a very long time, if ever. Somehow, thinking back on it, it only made me more depressed, though. In a few years, these kids are gonna be seniors, and after that, they’ll be the college students who happen to run into middle schoolers and shoot the shit for a few minutes. By that time, I’ll probably have left my Cistercian days far behind me. I might come back for the occasional Christmas or lunch with an old friend, but besides that, I’ll be living my own life.

It’s just weird, I guess, knowing that I had my time and finished it, and now I’m off doing my own thing, but things continue on at Cistercian like they always have and always will. I don’t have a place there anymore, there’s nothing left for me to do. I’m welcome to come visit occasionally, I’m sure, but that’s pretty much it. I’m finally at the point where, as a whole, our class of ’06 doesn’t rely on Cistercian anymore. We’re not “the class” anymore – we’re 44 independent people who may happen to drop in from time to time and remember the bond we used to share a million years ago. There’s finally enough distance between now and my time at Cistercian to realize that. I don’t belong there anymore, and to be honest, that scares the shit out of me.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

2007-10-15T06:54:00.000-05:00

I’m what you might call a night person. A person’s in a totally different mindset at three, four in the morning than he’s in at lunch or even when the sun’s just gone down. There’s something about that time of night, when businesses are long closed and most sane people have gone to bed, that attracts me, that always has. I can’t find the right word to describe it. Most good conversations seem to happen at night – I don’t know how many nights in high school I stayed up late on AIM, chatting about nothing and everything with whoever happened to be online at the time. It might simply be attributed to tiredness, synapses not firing the way they do after a good night of sleep. That can’t be it, though.

The whole world has a different feel to it when the only lights are coming from streetlamps and the occasional headlights of a passing car. You’re more open and honest with people then, maybe because of the simple rapport you share through knowing that you’re the only ones awake. Rationale and logic go out the window, and you begin to say what you really feel instead of tiptoeing around it. I can’t really call it cathartic, unless you have something you happen to be getting off your chest at the time. Ethereal, maybe. Surreal. I’ve told people things during various late night chats that, thinking back the next day, I wonder, Did I really say that out loud? Thinking about it further, though, I’ll realize that nine times out of ten, the statement in question was completely and utterly honest. That’s the way all conversations should be.

Last week, after walking back from 7-11 and encountering a homeless man asking us with tears in his eyes if we could spare a little bit of change for some gas money, a friend of mine made the intriguing comment, “I think three a.m. is when people’s lives start to suck.” It’s easy to hide from your problems in the hustle and bustle of a crowd, sitting in a packed restaurant or surrounded by a hundred people taking the same test you are. It’s easier to fit in, or at least pretend that you do. At night, though, when you finally have time to sit down by yourself and think about your station in life, everything becomes real. You can’t hide from it, you can’t distract yourself, you can’t pretend they’re not there because they’re not affecting your life at that very moment. When it’s just you, sitting on a street corner in darkness when there’s not a waking soul anywhere in sight, you feel like the only person in the world. All of your problems, your worries and fears and concerns, envelop you because that’s all there is. It’s a scary thing to some people, some more than others.

I’ve decided to stop telling people about whatever girl I might or might not have/develop a crush on as our relationship develops. I had a big thing for a girl last semester, and instead of telling her about it, I talked to everyone but her. Everything I wanted to say to her, everything I was feeling, I instead vented to various friends at various times of day. The same thing’s happened this semester on a much smaller scale. I’m tired of telling people over and over, “This is the girl, I can feel it,” “We have this great connection going on,” only to watch it fizzle out and simply stop bringing it up. Saying it out loud makes me feel like I’m doing something about it, even though I’m obviously not. If there’s a girl I like, I’m not going to talk to her for half an hour and then spend another two hours hashing over every nuance of the conversation with friends. Things I should be saying to her, I’m saying to Danny or Sean. I think that when I finally sit down with the girl that’s caught my eye and lay everything down on the line, I’d like to be in that late-night mindset. When I’m there, I’m not exactly logical or rational, but why should I be? It’s easier to talk to her in a stream of consciousness than stammer over every word, trying to decide what to say next that’s going to freak her out the least. If you think about it, in a strictly biological sense, is there anything logical or rational about love?

I’m pulling an all-nighter tonight because I can’t fall asleep. I slept for eleven hours two nights in a row, so when I laid down a few hours ago, sleep just didn’t come. I’m still not tired. Around me, I hear alarms going off, people waking up and showering and heading to their eight a.m. classes. The Quad’s not deserted anymore – some people are getting back from their morning jogs, others are ambling around, half awake, with a recently-purchased cup of coffee. The “real world” has returned in full force. I don’t think I’ll be in the same mindset I’m in now in a couple hours, once I’ve fallen back into my daily routine. Like I said earlier, that particular mindset can’t just come from a lack of sleep. It won’t be like normal, though, either. I’m not refreshed enough after a night spent chatting and reading to fall back into that pattern. I think I’m okay with that.

Postscript: I carried this poem around with me in my wallet until my mom ran it through the washer. I found it during a poetry research project junior year. Seems to reflect my thoughts on the matter exactly. Enjoy it, for what it's worth.

Acquainted with the Night
Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
O luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Holding your cards close to your chest.

2007-10-01T03:27:00.000-05:00

College is a very social environment – people meet each other for the first time on a daily basis. Some of these new relationships flicker and die as quickly as they’re born. The only interaction two people may have in their entire lifetime might be, “Hey, do you have the time?” “Yeah, it’s 3:30.” “Cool, thanks.” The two then go their separate ways, completely unaware that they each vote Democrat, have the same favorite movie, attended the same concert the weekend before, or maybe even have a mutual friend. Continuing a conversation beyond this bare minimum for no particular reason is pretty out of the ordinary, if not “weird.” How often do you start up a conversation with the person in front of you at the bank just for the hell of it? If you’re standing by yourself and he’s standing by himself, what’s to stop you from alleviating your boredom with a little bit of chitchat?

I bring this up because I eat alone at the dining hall occasionally. It’s not that I’m antisocial (most of the time, anyway), but if I need to grab a bite to eat before rehearsal or between classes, I won’t make it a point to call somebody just to have someone to eat with. Lots of people eat alone for this reason, the dining hall’s full of them. When I have a full tray, though, I’m more likely to plop down by myself than across the table from some random stranger. The occasional person can pull it off with an air of extroversion and nonchalance, but most of the time, a gesture like this comes off as desperate, forced, and a little bit sad. People often assume intentions that may or not be there. Guys don’t force conversation with other guys because it seems unspoken that guys “just don’t do that.” A guy who sits next to a random girl is obviously hitting on her. A girl usually won’t sit next to a random guy for the same reason. A dining hall full of solitary eaters, each one just as willing as the next to chat a little bit, but don’t initiate it for fear of sending out the wrong signal.

The first couple weeks of any new relationship are pretty treacherous territory. Neither person wants to come on too strong for fear of becoming “that guy who won’t stop calling me,” but he still has to convey enough interest to let the other person know that he wants to pursue some sort of relationship, whether friendship or otherwise. During this building stage, people reveal carefully selected facets of their personalities to one another to give off just the right impression. If the other person responds positively to these facets, then we progressively begin to let our guard down. Often times, a person may figure something out about his new friend that clearly isn’t up for discussion yet. For example, a friend of mine was telling me about a girl he met in some parking lot. She had a huge rainbow bumper sticker on the back of her car, leading him to the logical conclusion that she was gay. He didn’t feel comfortable breaching that subject with her without her consent. A couple weeks into the relationship, she “came out” to him – he faked surprise, but later revealed that he had kind of figured it out. She asked him why he hadn’t said anything. He told her that that part of her personality clearly hadn’t been on the table up to that point.

That seems to happen a lot – we know something about someone that we’re not supposed to know quite yet. Facebook, the greatest revolution to hit college since Jell-o wrestling (I’ve already used that metaphor in a newspaper article, but I love it, so chill), usually plays a big part in that. I meet a girl in the Quad, Facebook her, and I immediately know her phone number, her room number, etc. I can’t immediately use this information, though – way too creepy. I have to coincidentally run into her again, maybe a couple times, before the right opportunity arises to ask for her number. This opportunity usually comes in the form of a specific event – “Hey, want me to let you know if I’m going to that movie later?” “Yeah, gimme a call. My number’s…” You get the idea. Even if I’ve talked to someone several times and get along with them fine, it always seems awkward to just randomly throw out there, “Hey, I don’t think I have your number.” I could call them any time I wanted, I could drop by their room to pick up that CD we’d been talking about, I could mention that my hobbies also include waterskiing and playing guitar, but I can’t – it hasn’t naturally come up. All that information, though readily available, just isn’t on the table yet.

I guess my vague, roundabout point is that we limit potential relationships because of how we fear we’re being perceived. I don’t strike up a conversation with the marginally attractive girl a couple seats down from me because she’ll think I’m just trying to sleep with her. I don’t drop by someone’s room and ask if they want to grab coffee on a lazy Saturday because I’m not supposed to know that they live in room 212. I don’t call someone and let them know, “Holy shit, our favorite movie that we talked about is playing in the Union in half an hour” because they haven’t technically given me their number yet. We’re constantly backtracking, needling someone to tell us something we already know so that we can discuss it freely. I understand that these borders exist for a reason, but it’s a shame that a little bit of common sense (and maybe some Internet savvy) comes off as nothing but creepiness.

My Top Five Albums

2007-09-21T16:46:00.000-05:00

I listen to a lot of music – in that regard, I guess I fit into the mold of a typical college student. I think it’s impossible to have a favorite song and borderline impossible to have a favorite artist. There’s no doubt that some musicians are just plain better than others, whether in the writing phase or the performance phase, but overall, the market is too saturated to be able to name a single four-minute song as the epitome of music.

What I do believe in, though, is albums. The album as an art form seems like it’s been falling by the wayside in our iTunes-driven society – why buy the whole album when there are only one or two songs that you really like? An album should be an experience, a logical thought or musical progression from start to finish. It should represent a substantial (if not total) range of the artist’s talents, but it should also stay consistent within itself. I’m not a big fan of albums that try out a different genre for every track. An album should be a serialized collection of songs, not a mishmash of different stuff that the artist has recorded here and there.

The following, then, are my five favorite albums – notice how I say my personal favorites, not “the best.” When I was thinking about this last night (couldn’t fall asleep), I came up with two basic ground rules. Firstly, I wanted this list to consist of music I discovered on my own. “Abbey Road,” for example, is much more highly accredited than any album on this list, and I legitimately enjoyed it, but I only listened to it because of the ubiquity of the Beatles in our modern culture. The music on this list is stuff that I discovered on the radio, at friends’ houses, through my dad, etc, stuff I’d never heard of before I listened to it. I also limited this list to original studio albums – this eliminates CDs like best-of compilations, live albums, and (unfortunately) soundtracks. In chronological order of release:

Counting Crows – August and Everything After (1993)
My dad listed to this album all the time when I was a kid. At that age, I really only paid attention to “Mr. Jones” because I liked that it had my name in it. In early high school, though, I found the CD in my dad’s office and put it on as I was doing some homework. It’s amazing how much soul and emotion is in the lyrics of songs like “Round Here” and “Anna Begins” (one of my all-time favorite songs). These slower songs are almost haunting in how they stick with you long after you’re done listening to them. It’s rainy-day music, the stuff I would put on when I was at my most philosophic – driving home from play rehearsal at 1 a.m., for example. I’m also going to go out on a limb and say that “Raining in Baltimore” is the Crows’ most underrated song.

Weezer – The Blue Album (1994)
I waffled back and forth for a long time between “Blue” and “Pinkerton,” but in the end, I went with this one because it has more sentimental value. I bought it at the beginning of the summer after seventh grade, and it’s the first album that I became obsessed with. I listened to it over and over for days on end, and as such, I have it memorized – every lyric, every guitar lick, every idiosyncrasy, down pat. “Buddy Holly” is catchy, “In the Garage” is quirky and full of pop-culture references, and “My Name is Jonas” is just badass. “Only in Dreams,” the final track, is a seven-minute instrumental ballad that perfectly captures that feeling of adolescent longing. Listening to this album is forty-one minutes (and no, I didn’t have to look that up) of pure nostalgia and bliss.

Third Eye Blind – Third Eye Blind (1997)
Most people know this album for its biggest singles, “Semi-Charmed Life” and “Jumper,” but I usually skip over these songs when I’m listening in my car or on my iPod. It’s not that I don’t like them, but they’re way too overplayed – if I’m making it a point to listen to Third Eye Blind, I don’t want to listen to something I heard on the radio two days ago. Most of the songs are fast-paced and poppy, but not overly so. The subtleties of the lyrics and instrumentation make it so that you can hear a song several times and notice something new every time. If someone put a gun to my head and forced me to pick a favorite song, I’d probably say “Motorcycle Drive By.” That’s one of those songs where if I’m listening to it while I’m driving and I get to where I’m going before the songs over, I’ll sit in the car and let it finish.

Nickel Creek – Nickel Creek (2000)
I was in Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labours Lost” during my sophomore year of high school, and a couple songs from this album served as background music. The whole album is very chill, very laid back, but it’s earnest. If you’ve never heard a mandolin solo before, you might want to check out “The Fox.” As I’ve said before, great vocals are important to me, which makes “Out of the Woods” and “Reasons Why” just that much better. The latter, in particular, has tight harmony that blows me away every time. Instrumental pieces like “Ode to a Butterfly” are equally awe-inspiring. “The Lighthouse’s Tale” is just a great story put to an appropriately simple yet elegant melody. This one’s probably the most obscure on my list.

Ben Folds – Rockin’ the Suburbs (2001)
With a few exceptions mentioned in the booklet, Ben Folds plays every instrument and sings every vocal on the entire CD. This ranges from the mind-numbing piano lick that begins “Zak and Sara” to the crazy high note at the end of “Fired” to the kick-ass bass solo in the title song. Even if you don’t like his particular genre, you have to respect the guy as a musician. That’s talent. Most of his lyrics especially on this album, are very personal and specific, so much so that I only found out what several of them were about when I heard him explain them live. “Fred Jones, Part Two” and “Ascent of Stan” are perfect examples. I also hold “The Luckiest” to be one of the best love songs ever written, but hey, that’s just me.

"Ah, music, a magic beyond all we do here."

2007-09-18T13:41:00.000-05:00

I’d say that throughout my high school career, the phrase that I heard most often was “Jonesy, dammit, stop singing!”

Again, if you don’t know me very well (and you’d really have to not know me well at all to not notice this), I sing a lot. Not at choir, not at karaoke, not at talent shows, not even when someone has a guitar out; just to myself. It’s not particularly rare to see me walking across the quad singing Ben Folds or Avenue Q or something for no reason whatsoever. I’ve done it as long as I can remember, it’s not a habit that I just picked up one day. I distinctly remember that in first grade, I was singing “A Whole New World” to myself during a spelling test, and the teacher had to ask me to be quiet. That wouldn’t be so bad if the exact same thing hadn’t happened during a government quiz senior year.

I get songs stuck in my head (my dad calls them “ear worms”), and more often than not, I just can’t stop myself. It’s not like I make a conscious decision to spontaneously burst into song. Once I start, I’m usually aware I’m doing it within the first couple notes or so, unless I’m concentrating really hard on something else. I’ve tried quitting (believe me, I’ve tried), but again, the first couple notes usually eke their way out before I quite know what’s happening. By that point, I really think that it’d be more embarrassing to stop suddenly and turn red than to just follow through. Following though makes it look voluntary, even if it’s not. I’ve mostly just accepted that it’s a habit I’ll always have, for better or worse, and that people can just deal with it.

I’ve started to embrace it – again, it’s the follow through and commitment to the bit that helps pull it off. The guy wandering around mouthing something under his breath looks a little bit creepy; the guy who struts down the street belting “Hey Jude,” complete with contorted facial expressions, is just a badass. He’s got confidence. People watching him may think he’s a little out there, but it’s the good kind of out there. I might be way off base on this one, but I think if I pull it off right, it gives off the vibe of an easygoing, chill, relatively confident guy who’s just plain enjoying himself. It’s even been a conversation starter at times. I was ambling across the Quad last year, humming Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist from Avenue Q, and sure enough, some girl passing by yelled out “Dude, I love that musical.” We talked for ten or fifteen minutes after that. The same thing’s happened with everything from Coldplay to Ben Folds to Newsies (way underrated, you should check it out).

I think it’s fair to say that people who get really into music fall into it themselves. If you like Eric Clapton, you might try to pick up the guitar. If you listen for sick drum solos in every song you hear, you might try your hand at drums. People who are really into classical music try to learn piano. My favorite instrument (and I do believe it’s an instrument, just as important as all the others) is the human voice. That’s why I enjoy Broadway musicals so much – musicals are the one genre of music where an amazing voice is almost a prerequisite to enjoy any kind of success. Just like a normal person listens to the same guitar solo from a certain song over and over, I poo a little when I listen to John Tartaglia sing Purpose or, as cliché as it is, Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth kick ass in For Good.

Anyway, that’s my rant for the day. I always enjoy providing a little insight into the riddle wrapped in a puzzle wrapped in an enigma that is Matt Jones.

Philosophical Musings on God

2007-09-17T16:33:00.001-05:00

So, I’m going to get a bit more philosophical than usual, and I hope it’s a trend that continues over the coming posts. The purpose of a blog is to share your thoughts and opinions with the world, not to bitch about your crappy day and expect people to care. I’m not saying that venting like that isn’t healthy, but as I’ve learned the hard way, grudges are best expressed in that secret Microsoft Word document on your computer, not on the Internet.

Quick background on those who don’t know me very well – I went to a private, Catholic school for eight years before coming to UT. Talk about a reality slap. I took religion/theology classes for sixteen consecutive semesters, so I like to consider myself pretty well steeped in Catholic dogma. All of this knowledge is a blessing and a curse. On one hand, I’ve been seeing the world through this lens for so long that I almost forgot that not everyone agrees with it. For example, in a biology discussion section last year, we were flogging around the creationism/evolution debate. Our TA mentioned how evolution contradicts the book of Genesis, and I promptly raised my hand and talked about how “pretty much everyone with a brain” sees all that as nothing but an allegory. About five hands went up, and the TA just goes, “Well, that’s one opinion…”

On the other hand, I have a pretty firm set of beliefs and the facts to back them up. This comes in handy during late-night philosophical discussions with whoever happens to be studying in the Carothers lobby. Last week, some friends and I were chilling on the front porch talking about Catholicism, and for whatever reason, the seven sacraments came up. I rattled them off in under ten seconds, something that surprised even me – I haven’t consciously thought about that stuff since sixth or seventh grade. We talked about various historical developments like the Inquisition and the Crusades, and I was able to hold my own. If nothing else, then, I can thank Cistercian for giving me the ability to sound intelligent every once in a while.

Anyway, on that same night, we started talking about what exactly “God” is. I remember all of those qualifications that Fathers Roch and Paul pounded into us, qualifications like omniscience, transcendence, immanence, “homoousious,” etc, but those are just descriptions. What is the essence, the fundamental nature, of God? My friend Libby introduced an idea by saying that it would forever change the way we thought about God. I was a bit skeptical at first, but since I’ve been thinking on it, she was kind of right. The gist of the conversation was this – I don’t think many people believe that God is a physical being. The idea of some corporeal figure lounging around on a planet somewhere, watching Earth through a giant pair of binoculars, doesn’t inspire much respect. Everywhere we go, we hear “God is perfect, God is everywhere, God’s spirit is within us.” Most people (well, at least me) just nod along and accept it without really thinking about what that might mean. The idea that completely blew my mind is this – what if, instead of saying, “God is perfect because He’s God,” you say, “God is God because he’s perfect?”

According to this thought, God is an idea. He’s an ideal. He’s THE ideal. He’s perfect truth, perfect love, perfect justice, all of that. These are the things that make Him God, though, not the other way around. He’s the embodiment and compilation of all of these “good” ideals rolled into one. God is a measuring stick. If you believe that there’s such a thing as perfect justice (not that mankind has already attained it, mind you, but that it’s possible to reach), then hey, guess what – you believe in God. If you believe that there’s such a thing as perfect love, whether it’s fraternal, romantic, whatever, then you believe in God, whether you know it or not. If you believe in the concept of total and complete fairness, an idea admittedly more socialist than Machiavellian, then you’re on the same wavelength as God. Anyone who believes that these ideals exist and are worth achieving believes in God, basically.

My senior year government teacher defined politics as “The struggle for the good life for man.” If by this “good life” we mean a system of perfect justice, perfect fraternity, a perfect economy, and an agreed-upon morality, then, by using these definitions, the purpose of politics is to attempt to achieve union with God. Once you throw out all of those technicalities and restrictions that various faiths and governments have piled up since the dawn of man, religion and politics are really the same thing.

That’s just something I’ve been thinking about over the weekend, thought I’d write it down before the concept gets pushed out by an Art History test or an Econ reading. I’m not saying I buy into it wholeheartedly, but it’s definitely an intriguing theory.

Status

2007-06-26T00:07:00.000-05:00

For anyone who knows who David Novinski is, he gives his "status" talk once every couple years during one play rehearsal or another. The basic premise is that all human interaction revolves around a battle of who has the higher and lower status. Superiority and inferiority. Generosity and supplication. Etcetera. Sometimes the assertion of status is overt, like a boss telling his employee to get him a cup of coffee, just because he can. Other times, you have to read between the lines to figure it out. Compare the following two conversations:

Phone rings.
"Hello?"
"Hey, it's so-and-so. Can you do me a quick favor?"
"Sure, what's up?"
"Can you open the front door for me? I'm locked out."
"Yeah, I'll be there in a sec."
Click.

Phone rings.
"Hello?"
"Hey, it's so-and-so. Want to open the front door for me?"
"Uh...sure, I guess. I'll be there in a sec."
Click.

Most people know that I have a tendency to overanalyze pretty much anything anyone says, so you might want to take everything I'm saying with a grain of salt. First of all, there's the obvious difference of "Can you do me a favor?" vs. "Hey, do this for me," but there's not too much to say about it that's not right there on the surface. I'm more interested in the word choice when the guy that's locked out gets to the point. "Can you..." vs. "Want to..." is a world of difference. "Can you do this for me?" is a polite request from a guy with lower status to a guy with higher status. He's admitting, however subtly, that he screwed up and that he needs help. It's not exactly the prime example of humility or politeness, but it doesn't come off as overbearing.

The use of the word "want," though, implies an invitation. "Hey, want to come to my party?" "Hey, want some of my pizza?" "Hey, want to come open this door for me?" More often than not, a lower status person receives an invitation from a higher status person. Saying "Want to..." instead of "Can you...", then, is an attempt to exert one's superiority over someone else while requesting a favor from them. He can't just ask someone for a favor; he has to insinuate that doing this favor benefits both of them.

I'm only bringing this up because it seems like this has become the most common way to ask for a favor. No self-respecting student, for example, wants to admit he's bad at a certain subject. When he asks for help, instead of saying, "Hey, I don't get this, can you give me a hand?", he'll probably say instead, "Hey, wanna come help me study for math later?" Of course he doesn't "want to" - he'd probably rather be playing Guitar Hero or Facebooking or something other than explaining calculus. But, if it's posed as a request instead of an invitation (a bit of ego-stroking, perhaps?), then yeah, sure, he's free for an hour or so. People that ask for favors like that, as a whole, just bug me. Instead of calling me "buddy" and inviting me to run your wallet to you halfway across campus, just ask. Seriously. You come off as much less of a douche that way.

A Trip to Starbucks

2007-06-02T17:55:00.000-05:00

I went to Starbucks today. The purpose of my trip was twofold: firstly, I needed some caffeine in my blood. Sure, we have a coffeemaker, but the only coffee we have in the house is a gallon tub of that Folgers Half-Caff shit. My mom thinks that my dad and I drink too much coffee, so she bought that to keep our bodies from shutting down or something. With coffee, I enjoy the taste, but I mainly drink it to stay awake through the day. Instead of cutting back, then, I end up drinking twice as much just to get my usual jolt. Also, when I make coffee, I get open-bottle syndrome - as long as there's still coffee in that pot, I'm gonna drink it. And since making a single cup's worth of coffee seems pointless, I end up all jittery.

Secondly, and more importantly, I needed to get out of the house. I've been home alone all day, and I got a mild case of cabin fever. I usually only go to Starbucks before or after going to Blockbuster, just a quick in-and-out that seems more habitual than necessary (that's what she said). Today, however, in typical college fashion, I decided to bring a book and sit outside for a while.

A store clerk, in general, exists to check you out as efficiently and unscrupulously as possible, no more, no less. Any conversation he might start with a customer is mandated either by company policy ("Did you find everything okay this evening?") or to simply avoid awkward silence ("Man, it's hot out, huh?"). Anything other than that, and a cranky customer with a Bluetooth in his ear asks him to hurry it up, please. With this in mind, I approached the barista, smiled, and asked, "I'm getting kinda tired of my usual - can you recommend anything cold with a lot of caffeine?" She looked up and seemed a bit excited - acknowledgments of being a person instead of a nametag come few and far between. After some preliminary questions about my preferences, she decided to make me what she usually gets during breaks, with my permission, of course. When I pulled out my gift card to pay, she winked and said, "Don't worry about it this time." Score. The drink was pretty damn good, too, I must say.

Anyway, I sat in the sun and read for half an hour or so (I'm reading PD James' Children of Men, it's incredible so far). Sitting in a cafe is great for peoplewatching, which I enjoy - it's always interesting to listen in on conversations, especially extended ones. One guy was talking about how his son had been busted for possession a couple years ago, but his lawyer got him off on a technicality. A Hispanic guy with a perfect American accent told a story about how, last week, he had just finished mowing his lawn when a blonde chick in a truck pulled into the driveway next door and said, "Hey, the lawn looks great, would you mind doing mine soon?" He responded that he had a business presentation in a couple days, his wife was out of town, and his kids had the flu, so he probably wouldn't be able to squeeze her in. He finished up and went in the house through the front door, in plain view of his (new?) neighbor. He couldn't help peeking through the window to see her reaction - she was mortified.

I went back inside and ordered another drink, iced tea this time. I hadn't paid for the first one, so a second one didn't seem like splurging or anything. I struck up a conversation with another guy that works there, Tim, whom I kind of know. He came into Blockbuster almost every day last summer, just like I went to Starbucks, so we're pretty familiar with each other if nothing else. He's a couple of years older than I am, probably early twenties. Last summer, he mentioned how he lived at home and that movies were usually his only form of entertainment. I thought it was kind of sad at the time, but now I realize that it's not that different from what I'm doing this summer. We're both college students living at home for the summer, making some cash and trying not to let our parents crush our spirits. He's a little older than I am; so what?

I'm writing out of boredom more than anything else. I'm hoping that if I type long enough, something amazing and insightful might eventually eek its way out. Not today, I guess.

In the Beginning...

2007-05-29T01:25:00.000-05:00

Well, now that the inherent boredom of summer has lost its novelty and become, well...boring, I thought I'd create something that'll help me use my time more productively than Minesweeper or Facebook. I like to think I'm a fairly decent writer, but my output as of late has been limited to research papers, essays, and the like. Thought this might help change that.

I had a Xanga back in high school (that makes me sound older than I really am), and it was a disaster. I'm realizing in hindsight that the majority of my social problems during junior and senior year were directly related to things I posted up there. It was too personal, way too personal - I said exactly what I was thinking, I named names, I passed judgments, and worst of all, I was blissfully ignorant about doing it. I wasn't treating it like a publicly-advertised online journal, which is what it was; I was treating it like a diary that most people wouldn't let anyone read in a million years. I should start this one off, then, by promising that my entries aren't going to consist of "Today I did this, this, this, and this" or "I've been feeling lost and alone lately, why won't anyone call me?" I'm not quite that emo anymore.

Instead, I'm hoping that most of my topics will be relatively abstract. I'm kind of a quiet guy, a lot of times I just sit and think. I notice things about society, about people around me, about life in general. Some of them I flog around and then dismiss, but occasionally, I get this idea that deserves more than that. I usually scribble down a rough outline on a post-it or in the back of a class notebook, figuring I'll come back to it later. You wouldn't believe how many crumpled up pieces of paper I came across when I was moving out of my dorm room a couple weeks ago. I'm not saying the ideas I come up with are earthshattering or even particularly interesting, but if you didn't want to read them, you wouldn't have come to this website in the first place.

I really want to go on a road trip. I almost did last summer, with some friends from the summer camp that I used to work at, but my parents nipped that in the bud pretty quick. After about a week of pleading, they allowed me to fly out of Dallas, meet my friends in Arizona, stay for two nights, and then fly back home. I tried to argue that flying defeats the entire point of a road trip, but they just told me not to push my luck. I've been reading a lot of travelling novels lately, everything from Kerouac's On the Road to Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, and I get more and more pumped after every one I finish. It wouldn't be about the people I went with - hopefully, it'll be about the people I meet along the way. I want to stop at a mom-and-pop's diner in Shithole, Texas and make small talk with the waitress. I want to pull into a gas station at 5 a.m. after a full night of driving, buy a cup of crappy coffee and maybe a donut, and keep going. I want to hit 100 mph on deserted highways that continue on as far as I can see with trees and bushes being the only scenery on both sides. I don't care where I go; in fact, I don't really want to know. It'd be cool to head west, I want to see the ocean. I haven't seen the ocean in a long time. But, if I see a sign that says "Springfield 24," for example, I want to think, "That sounds like as good a place as any to spend the night" instead of, "Crap, I'm an hour behind schedule."

At home, I have relatively little responsibilities, but no freedom. At college, I have almost unlimited freedom, but lots of responsibilities to bog it down. On a road trip like that, though, even if only for that week, or two weeks, or whatever, it seems like I'd have complete freedom with zero responsibility. Everyone's dream, am I right?

Well, that's it for the night. I need to start jobhunting tomorrow. I thought I'd found a great job, but turns out that it's gonna be an unpaid internship. I'm still gonna do it because it sounds interesting, but I guess I should find something that pads my bank account a little bit, too. Take it easy, everybody.