My baby, er, my baby

On Saturday Natasha and I went to check out this store we saw that was called, simply enough, stuff. I figured they might have some stuff. So we head in, and oh my fucking god, this place is a gold mine for me. It's not so much random stuff as it is used electronics. Speakers, receivers, digital cameras, laptops, Ipods, DVDs, all used, all cheap. Ah, but that wasn't the best part.

They had a game section.

SNES, N64, Playstation 1, Playstation 2, Xbox, Gameboy, Gameboy Advanced. And they had games. I wasn't sure what to do. Should I just explode? Or maybe I should wait awhile and then implode into a super-massive black hole and suck all the cool stuff into a little ball of awesome with me at the center.

And then, there it was, a NES. I bought it, plus Super Mario Bros.



Oh, I was so excited. I took it home, hooked it up to the TV, and turned it on. Natasha was excited too, because she used to play Super Mario when she was a kid, and it was the only video game she ever liked.

Flash, flash, flash. No go. Even when the cart was out. Reset, no go. Try another TV, no go. Fuck.

I took it back the next day. I was going to buy N64 at the same place but they had no memory sticks and I wanted to be sure I'd be able to get one without to much hassle. Then I remember, hey, there is a used games and CD show down the road I live on. Head down there, BAM - N64 for twenty-five dollars. I bought Starfox 64 with it and I have Mario 64 on the way.



The stuff store had Zelda: Ocarina of Time for 10 dollars, so I'm going to pick it up after work tomorrow. This should keep me held over until the next round of good 360 games come out, because as cool as The Darkness and Overlord look, they don't look 60$ cool. I learned my lesson after Star Trek: Legacy. Fun game, for 40 dollars. Not for 60.

Kitten Pictures

I said I'd post pictures of the kitten, so here we go.

First, here is a picture of Purrball, who is still very cute and likes to find things to hide in.



And now, pictures of the new kitten. Her name is Tonka, because she is so damn tough. Purrball has been after her, as you might expect, but Tonka doesn't run, she gets revenge. I want to take a video of them because it's hilarious to see an almost full grown cat being chased by a 9 week old kitten. Not to mention Tonka will take Purrball's blows and just look at her like she's stupid, then attack. This might have something to do with the fact that Tonka has her claws and Purrball does not...









Tonka is a riot, and gets into everything. Right now she is biting my computer, and whenever I write she likes to help by standing on the keyboard and typing kkkkkkkkkkkkkjjjjjjjjjjjijjjjjjj. The next great American novel, for sure.

You Scoundral!

So I started working at my part-time temp. job Monday. Saying I do writing would be, well, a lie. Most of what I do would be far better described as Data Entry, that which isn't Data Entry would be best described as copying shit. That's fine by me. Writing isn't something I want to do as a 9-5 career, it's merely something I'm good at and therefor probably able to make more money at. Writing business plans is not something I have any innate concern for. It's only the money people might pay me to do that sort of writing which is exciting. But anyway, my new part-time job at Wells Fargo isn't to complex so far, but it does have it's entertaining moments. It's a decent enough environment, and I wouldn't mind be hired into it permanently, but it's far from clear if that will happen.

I'm working with Customer Correspondence, which is a fancy way of saying Customer Service, and though I'm not doing any actual customer service, I do get to see all the shit people mail in. A lot of stuff is Date-of-Death balance inquires, which are basically inquires into how much money a dead relative has left them. These are sorta interesting because they include a death certificate which tells how a person died. Turns out, everyone dies of natural causes these days - not even accidents are something to worry about. It's also interesting to see the occasional millionaire, and wonder if the surviving relatives know just how much they're about to get.

By far more interesting, though, are the complaints people send in. Most of them are mundane, and concern nothing more than overdraft charges which appear to have been resolved by the company without much further problem, though some people seem snubbed by the idea, as if Well Fargo was their close friend and went to a dance party without telling them, much less inviting them. We also get mail from prisoners that need to do something to their account, and these letters are, surprisingly, very apologetic about the whole ordeal.

Some, however, are truly amazing. There seems to be a patriotic theme among certain customers - that is to say, these customers are not only angry that Wells Fargo has performed a certain action, but they have had their sense of nation offended. These customers go on rants that have been spiced up with patriotic language, and they insist that Wells Fargo's particular offense against them is part of what is wrong with America today. One guy even said, and quote, "...it is scoundrels like you who tear at the fabric of our great nation". Indeed! I guess dubs has it wrong - we don't need a war on terror, rather, we need a war on banks. But that's not the best of it. The best of it was undoubtedly a sue-happy patriot who began his complaint by detailing how hard he was going to sue Wells Fargo (really, really hard). He then listed a number of evils which Wells Fargo has committed, combined with some demands concerning various amounts of cash he felt needed to be given or returned to him. Then comes the big, fat cherry on top of this compliant sundae - he insists that he is going to call Bill O'Reilly because "He goes after the big guys for the little guys", and then he declares that if Bill O'Reilly doesn'tcome after Wells Fargo on his show, he is going to sue Bill O'Reilly for false advertisement! I wanted so badly to bust out laughing at that one, but I had to maintain my composure.

I post any other notable stories I have from the place.

Oh, guess what? We got another kitten, for our max of two pets per apartment (not that I'd want anymore). She doesn't have a name yet, but I'll post pictures soon.

The Big Move

Two days ago I promised a big update with photos, and here it is.



March 14th, 2007:

The Jeep is packed and ready to go, crappy U-haul trailer in tow. We hit the road around 5:30 or 6:00, after spending a few hours hanging out with George. As we head north I can't help but notice that the Jeep refuses to go faster than 55 miles per hour, and that it is running hotter than it should. But what the hell can I do about that? We made it to Lacrosse, WI, that night and checked into a Microtel hotel, and after a covert operation to sneak the cat in, went back downstairs to get some things out of the back of the trailer. But aha! Here the first of many fun problems begin. See, when I put the lock on the trailer, I neglected to notice that it had become stuck in an angle that made it impossible to put the key into the lock. The key was just to be to fit. But we were tired, so we shrugged it off and waited for the next day.

March 15th, 2007:

This day really sucked. We left around 9:00 and spent about another hour trying to find some way to solve our lock problem. I thought about buying bolt cutters but I was a little afraid the thing might fly off and kill me or something, since I'd never used bolt cutters before and didn't have any eye protection, or any protection of any sort, really. So then we tried to get the top of the key shaved off so it would fit into the lock, but Home Depot was baffled and refused to do it. So we gave up and left. The hill going up towards the plains nearly killed the Jeep right there, but we manage to make it - only to find that the Great Plains had a headwind of about 25 to 40 MPH, which meant the Jeep, which had been going about 55, now could only go about 45. It was slow going and the engine remained hot for most of the time.

Luckily, the cat at some point decided to be cute and relieve the tension.







Purrball was great for pretty much entire trip. She wasn't scared at all of driving, in fact, she seemed to be very curious about everything, including why the shit outside was moving by so fast. She ran around the Jeep a little, but for the most part slept the afternoons away in the back.

Around noon we stopped for food and noticed a mechanic's shop, so we went to see if there was anything that could be done about the heat. The mechanic said that the thermostat was broken (this apparently isn't what feeds the temp gauge, but rather what decides when the engine is hot enough to need additional cooling) and he replaced it. Which took two fucking hours. Natasha got Purrball out and let her run around inside the shop, and we also found a place to shave off he key so we could get into the U-haul. After two fucking hours we were back on the road, but the problem was not solved. Lucky for us, the wind started to die down, and the rest of the day actually went pretty smooth. We stopped for the night somewhere on the west end of South Dakota.

March 16th, 2007

The day started off well. The wind wasn't bad. There wasn't much remarkable except for the badlands, which were a change of scenery. But our luck didn't hold, and around 4 or 5, somewhere in Wyoming, the Jeep's temp went into the red and we had to stop for awhile. The hills were becoming more severe and the Jeep was having a hard time handling the load. In addition, it hadn't shifted properly, putting extra strain on the engine. We got going again and made it half-way into Montana, starting to get into the rocky mountains. The weather was cool and I wanted to just drive the night, so we could get out of the mountains before day-break and the resulting increase in temperature. But then I noticed the GEN light was one, and Natasha informed me that actually, it'd be one for awhile - woops. What GEN meant was that the engine wasn't generating electrical power like it should, and so the battery was draining instead. Since we needed our headlights this was not a good thing. Plus the battery indicator was at this point very close to red = dead. I turned around and made for Big Timber, the last town we'd passed. The Jeep was just not going to make it. But a-ha - there was some hope for us yet, because the Inn we stayed at was right next to a U-haul place. We decided to get up early and visit it the next day.

March 17th, 2007

We visited the U-haul place as soon as it opened. Actually, it wasn't a U-haul place so much as it was an auto glass company, but it had U-hauls as a side operation (and why not, it's easy money). The guy was ULTRA friendly, he even charged up our battery. But there were some problems. We wanted to rent a truck and tow the Jeep behind us, but the glass company didn't have any tow dollys, and only had two 26' Super Mover trucks. The place 35 miles up the road did. I decided that with a full charge and no need for headlights, making it that far shouldn't be a problem, so we reserved the only two things the U-haul place had - a 17' truck an a tow dolly for the front two wheels. Obviously, that truck was bigger than we needed, way bigger, but it was the smallest the place at Livingston had.

We arrived in Livingston without problem. But they had a surprise for us - the 17' truck was already rented out. So instead, they were giving us this thing for the same price.



For those who didn't know, the trailer the Jeep was pulling was 8" long and 4 1/2" wide. Now we had this beast. This is what our stuff looked like once we had it all loaded inside.



Yeap. It was huge. We could have actually driven the Jeep into the back of the thing, if only it was legal. Anyway, we were ready to hit the road. But what is this? Another problem! The tow dolly we have has a busted fender which could come off at any moment. So the U-haul in Livingston refers us to U-haul in Bozeman, which has a repair center for these sorts of things. We take the big fuck-off truck up there and give them a visit. A guy named Lance comes out and tells us he'll be fixing it, and h he pulls the truck into the garage.



That's Lance. Lance is sort of a quite guy. And he doesn't speak very clearly. But grease monkeys often don't. The best mechanic I ever had was a guy named Guy. He was 65 years old and was almost entirely incomprehensible, but damn could he fix a car. So Lance deserves a shot. Now, it does take him about forty minutes to fix it, which is twice as long as he estimated. But whatever. Sometimes a problem arises. You just gotta roll with it. Eventually Lance gets it done and informs us we're ready to roll.

Indeed! We drive about an hour before stopping at a rest stop for a quick piss break. I'm worried about the Jeep falling off the dolly, so I go back to check and make sure everything is secure. And what do I find? The new fender, which also includes the tail light, has completely fallen apart. The tail-light is entirely gone - who knows where the hell it is now - and the top part of the fender has been dragging the road. At this point I don't give a shit, I just want to get to Portland, so I duct-tape the fender back into place and we hit the road.

After that, everything was smooth. The mountains provided beautiful scenery and we cleared them by the end of the day. The cat yet again provided entertainment by sitting on the dashboard.




We stopped in some random town which included the nicest Best Western I've ever scene, and we stayed there for the night.

March 18th 2007 - The End!

This day was unremarkable. Nothing went wrong. I had a great peanut-butter milkshake at some mom-n-pop place by a gas station. We arrived in Portland at around 3:00 and were shown to our new apartment.

The outside:


The view from our tiny deck:



Our Living Room:


Our Kitchen:



The apartment is great. Portland is great. The people are friendly and there are a lot of random little places to go. Just today we visited a little village with neat toy-store and a great candy shop. There are many places like this. And a mall with a skating rink, which is awesome.

Natasha and I now have our new cars. Hers is a 2005 Kia Rio.



Mine is a 2001 Saturn SL2.




Oh, and my job - I'll soon be starting part-time temp to hire work as a proof-reader and form letter writer at Wells Fargo. It sounds a little boring but not entirely boring, and if I get hired full-time it'll provide a decent amount of income. I don't know much more about it yet because I haven't started. They have to do a background check, which takes about 5 days. Hopefully they won't see the pictures of me with the stuffed hippo's decapitated head. Besides that I'm also looking for server work, because you get paid a min wage of 7.80 + tips here, which means servers do very well for themselves here. Working only 3 nights a week + my PT at Wells Fargo should provide more than enough income for now.

And that's about all I have. Everything is up to date now. So I won't be doing any more monster-posts in the near future. Or any at all.

Halo 3

I bought crackdown the day it came out, and so I was one of the lucky people that was eligible to play the Halo 3 beta. Unfortunately the majority of the Beta period was the time in which I was moving, and I THOUGHT that by the time I came back from visiting Natasha's relatives in Boise, the beta was over. But I just found out today that it was extended a tad bit longer, so I downloaded it.

I went in without expecting much either way. I loved Halo but thought Halo 2 was only so-so. I wasn't sure what to expect. But after playing about five matches tonight, I have to say it looks like Bungie is at the top of their game.

The flow of multi-player is amazing. The weapons are various, fun, and well balanced. The maps are nicely designed, and some of the not-so-useful but still fun things add some spice, such as the ability to pick up machine gun turrets and carry them as a weapon, and the nifty ATVs which are useless on High Ground (it's so small, why add transportation) but still throughly fun to drive. Dual-wielding has been toned down, the assault rifle is here and behaves like it should, the carbine is as much fun as ever. And the we have the spiker guns - those things are mutherfucking glorious!

But the real evidence, I think, that Halo 3 will live up to expectations are the little things. The game is fairly pretty to look at, but when the action revs up it really has it where it counts. The bullet effects are intense - seeing bullets fly in front of your nose is now as scary as the rocket launcher in Halo 1&2 - and the splash effects of bullets and grenades are top-notch. The explosions? They're the best I've ever seen. And what's even better is that the sound effects go along with it. A close-call sounds as scary as it looks.

So I'm excited about Halo 3 now. I certainly like the multi-player a lot better than the boring Gears of War. My only concern is the single-player. The plot of Halo 2 was inane. Hey, let's add in a talking Venus Fly-trap! Let's make a Gorilla the villain! Let's give the Covenant a player character exactly like the Spartan! Not to mention the ending. Ugh. It was still decent in spite of these problems, because no one knows how to make a level epic quite like Bungie, but I really hope they shape up the plot for Halo 3, because they have a lot of shit to resolve.

Anyway, I've got to go cap some bitches.

Isn't it Ironic?

After several weeks of research I left the house at around 10:00 am this morning with the intention of getting a vehicle. I was looking at the Ford Focus, the Saab 9-3, and Saturns of various kinds. I was very excited about a number of Saturn L200s - they had all the bells and whistles, above average gas mileage, and I liked the way they looked, too!

But before I left today, I doubled-checked (I mean, quad-checked) reliability and found out something horrible. Although Saturns are generally good cars - those in the 98-02 range in particular, before Saturn tried to get more hip with the new and crappy ION, not to mention that shit-tastic SUV, the L200 has been plagued by problems with the timing chain. It turns out that the timing chain sometimes breaks, and as a result sends shrapnel all over the top of the engine, ruining it and requiring a complete engine rebuild. Consumer Reports ranked it as one of the worst used cars to own, period, because of this frequent and very costly defect.

But not every Saturn on my list was an L200, so I went out and checked some other vehicles. First I looked at a 2002 Saturn SC2 with 87,000 miles ($5,995) Looked good outside, the engine sounded lovely, and it had all the bells and whistles, including a power sunroof! But weight - what's this? The power sunroof doesn't close! And the power window on the right side doesn't go down! The salesman said "Don't let that stop you from getting the car, we can fix it for you", but since the place was, honestly, sketchy as fuck anyway, I said yea right and left.

So what next? A 2001 Saturn SL2 with 66,000 miles (4,995). This was the last year Saturn built the SL2, which was a great car, but the exterior looks a little old now (see: not that cool). Still, I liked the color, and besides some fine scratches it was actually in better condition then the SC2 I looked at before it (which actually had a few inch-wide dints, strange for a Saturn, since their exteriors are made not to dent). The exterior and interior were obviously of an older design, but were in good shape. It had no power options and the interior light decided it didn't want to quite stay in place. Yet it drove very well. I was surprised by how quite it was, and although the ergonomics were obviously that of a 2001 car, it drove like it was brand-new. I Was impressed, but I still was unsure about the lack of options. It didn't even have a passenger side-airbag. That model year is rated very high in crash tests, but still.

Next I looked at a 2003 Ford Focus with 72,000 miles (6,250). Being the newest vehicle I looked at, it had the obvious advantage of looking and feeling the most modern. The interior was a bit more spacious - in fact I had to bring the seat up to get into a comfortable driving position! - though the back seats looked like they paid the price for this. On the outside, it was a very sexy car. White, four door, no dents or scratches. On the inside, it was similar, though I didn't like everything. The steering wheel seemed strangely small, and the huge air-bag compartment made it look like some sort of insect. And the air-conditioning vents were weird oval compartments that were placed in all kinds of strange places. I think Ford was trying to be a little to modern, but still, it defiantly felt newer than the Saturns. Under the hood was dirty, though - another used car dealer that doesn't bother to fully check and clean their cars beforehand, I guess - and there was a definite shudder in around 55mph which became more pronounced when breaking as these high speeds. The wheels would need balancing and aligned, and if it'd been like that long enough, it would need new tires. The tires defiantly did look more worn than those on the Saturns.

Then I went to look at a Saab. As I was heading this way, I noticed the battery gauge on the Jeep was getting really low. One it's problems is that the alternator doesn't always work, but typically it kicks back in before the battery starts to die. Not this time. It was going down quick. I stop at the Saab place and quickly test-drive a 1999 convertible with 90k miles (6,995). Oh yea, this baby is loaded. But not perfect. Despite all it's options, the exterior and interior conditions seemed to be slightly worse than the other vehicles I looked at. A few more dings, and it was the only car I looked at which had problems with the interior quality (the leather on the passenger seat was cracking in places). Yea, it had power everything - yea, it was convertible - but yea, it was 2,000 more than the Saturn SC2 and promised to be less reliable, as far as I could tell. And I new the gas mileage would be worse.

The Jeep barely started when I left. As the gauges went out as I crossed the Sellwood Bridge, which is approximately 4 miles from where I live. No MPH, no RPM, fuel and oil pressure still worked, though. The radio died and the clock went out too. Fine, I thought - as long as I could keep it moving, it'd be okay - but I couldn't. I had to stop to get on Mcloughlin, the street I live on, and in response it nearly died. It wouldn't die completely - but without power to help it idle, it wasn't wanting to get back up to highway speed. I nursed it over to a side-street and parked it, then called Natasha to pick me up. It's still there right now. There's no fee for that street and no postings for time limits to park, so I'm just going to wait till tomorrow and then get AAA to tow it back to the apartment for me.

Of course, the Jeep's breakdown meant I had no trade-in worth mentioning. This sorta made my decision for me, since I didn't want to go much over 100 on monthly payments, and without a trade-in most the vehicles I looked at or were going to look at were now out of my price range. After a brief double-check of carfax and reliability ratings to make sure the SC2 2001 was solid, I had Natasha take me back to it, and after another test-drive and a check of various parts to make sure they were working, I told them I wanted it. Now it's just a matter of financing, but I can't get that until Monday.

Overall, I'm happy with my purchase, even though I was pushed towards it. The low price and low miles combo was hard to pass up, plus it drove better than any other vehicle I'd driven. Yea, it doesn't have any bells or whistles besides a CD player. I wish that wasn't the case. But I need something to get me around.

I'll post a big update soon, even bigger than this one, after I get the vehicle. It will include all sorts of neat stuff like pictures from my trip across the country, pictures of the apartment, pictures of OMG CUTE CAT, and pictures of me and Natasha's new rides. I'll also talk a little bit about the new job I'll be starting.

The Death of a Hero, the Birth of a Monster

Last night the Jeep was not dead, but certainly it was in critical condition, and struggling on much like the guy you occasionally on TLC with the knife in his head. So many problems. Overheating. Not shifting properly. Then something shit out that made the battery stop recharging. I realized this at about 11 last night as we left a town called Big Timber, and I had to U-turn and rush back. We found a room in this crappy hotel called River Valley Inn (where the river was, who knows) and were checked in by an old lady with pink-tinted glasses. Amazingly, even that strange little hotel had wifi, but I was to tired and concerned to post anything.

But there was some light to the tunnel - the Inn, as it turned out, was directly next to a Uhaul place. So we woke up at 7 and went over to find out if we could get a truck and tow the Jeep. Which they didn't have - but the guy was nice enough to charge up the battery so that we could get to the next town, which had a larger Uhaul place. We were set up for a 17' truck, pretty big, but whatever.

But go big or go home, right? We arrive and find out that they already promised the 17 footer to someone else, so they hook us up (for the same price) with a 24 foot super-mover. I mean, the thing is almost a semi-truck. And so much room inside we didn't have to stack a single thing, plus we put the bikes in. Then we hooked the Jeep up to the tow dolly and hit the road with our fatass truck.

Of course we couldn't get going without on more thing going wrong - one of the fenders on the tow dolly was broken and flapping around, so we went to a Uhaul place to get it repaired real quick (it's just a piece of plastic). Unfortunately the mechanic who did the job is a complete and total idiot who is unable to even properly deal with pieces of plastic, because as soon as we left the Uhaul place the part of the fender containing the light came right off. Yea, bolting things down is HARD. But I didn't care at that point. We duct-taped what we could and drove on.

It's actually a lot of fun to drive, except for being horribly bumpy. But it's nice to be able to look the truckers in the eyes for once, although I can't help but believe that they think Uhaul trucks are nothing but impostors, manned by civilians, of all things!

The fatass truck hauled us through the mountains, which were beautiful. Now we're in Washington, at a place call Ritzville which consists of three hotels and a McDoanlds. The best western we're at is actually pretty plush for a interstate hotel, big fridge, microwave, pool+sauna, and really big continental breakfast complete with waffle maker.

Tomorrow, to Portland! Finally.

Oh Great Plains, You're so funny

We're in South Dakota now. The going has no exactly been easy so far. The engine has been running hotter than it should because of the trailer which is...not that big of a deal yet but when the gauge is getting close to the red it isn't a comfortable feeling.

The big problem was the fucking win. Trying to drive the Jeep and trailer through a 25-35 MPH headwind was like trying to keep a box of rocks afloat with a box of rocks. That trailer is the least aerodynamic thing ever. Luckily the wind did let up as we drove out of Minnesota, which allowed us to go faster and made the engine run cooler as well.

Now it's almost time for the mountains.

The Great Plains seemed to be the strangest portion of land ever created. The entire way through South Dakota and Minnesota I've seen over and over strange advertisements for 'wall drug', including everything from T-rex to cracked out roosters. Also there was the giant sculpture park, featuring the 'world's largest bull head'.

Well, here we go again.

That is it

I had my last final exam today, and that is it. No more undergrad. It's over. Fin, done, CYA FUCKING LATER.

I'm note sure how to feel about it, if I should feel anything about it. I'm not really looking forward to the graduation ceremony because I hate ceremonies in general. It is difficult to act excited for me, and I'm not really excited about graduation. Moving? Sure, thats exciting, that's interesting. Getting a diploma, however, is not.

Not to mention the heat is going to be sweltering in those black robes.

I've been preparing a few stories to send out after the move. I'm not sure how this is going to go. I've never sent my stuff away to be published except for the campus literary journals, which are far less formal and intimidating. All the creative writer professors at some point have given the students their obligatory 'It sucks' speech, in which they try to introduce us to the fact that most journals get 10 or 20 or 50 times as many submissions as they'll ever publish. And there is another small catch - virtually none of the journals a starting writer can submit to pay. Oh well. It's not like I thought I was going to graduate and write as a career. But sheer mass of submitting is overbearing. Sending out manuscripts to 50 journals in the hope you'll get a hit is not going to be fun. I like writing less than organizing what I've written.

But, it must be done!

I've also been thinking about making a zine. I don't know about what. And I don't think it is important what. I just feel like it would be a good creative project for me to embark on and eventually finish. It would give me something in my hands that I've made from start to finish. And I'm sure as I populate it with meager content and attempt to make it not look like shit I'd learn a few skills. I've been pretty impressed by some of the zines in the library. There is something instantly interesting about them. Perhaps its the fact that a zine can, like a magazine, be picked up, read, and put down - you don't even have to look at it again, ever. But chances are that in that 5 minute timespan you have read a story that you'll remember.

And Portland has tons of zine resources. This is why I wanted to move to Portland. They have everything I could ever want.

Okay, thats all.

Naked Chicks

According to CNN, 18,000 people stood naked in a square in Mexico City today. Check out this website (NWS).

More than a Pound of flesh

I'm amazed that this guy had found so many people willing to pose nude at once. I didn't really expect that this would be possible.

I'm also amazed at the photos. They strike me as incredibly frightening. With 3000 naked people all lying on a street, the boundaries between each person becomes almost impossible to define, so it's not so much 3,000 people but just a quarter-mile stretch of pure flesh. This is what a holocaust looks like. Just bodies, exposed and indistinguishable.

RDIKLUS

http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2007/05/03/news/top/news02_impeach_bush_plate.txt

That's an article talking about how a woman with a vanity license plate "MPEACHW" is being forced by the state of South Dakota to remove it because someone complained. This is all well and good, it is standard practice for vanity plates to be recalled at a moments notice, mostly because the government doesn't like the possibility that it will have to take credit for endorsing an offensive message. However, the recall on this plate is worthy of some additional controversy.

Why? Well, her plate is a political message. And while even that would not hold as a valid defense because the plate is in fact state property, the issue has become complicated because many states have taken it upon themselves to create special plates for certain groups - and these plates often support a political view. The environmental plates have been a predecessor to this, and have existed for a very long time. Now, states are allowing other sorts of plates, such as Indiana's plate which declares "In God we Trust" or the plates now available in many midwest states which say "Choose Life". Other possibles include the Support Our Troops and the Secure (state X) plates.

These plates are obvious endorsements of a political view by the state. The state is using these plates as a means of political speech, much like the "MPEACHW" plate this woman had on her vehicle. The question then, is - whats the difference? The only difference seems to be one political message is endorsed by the state, while the other was chosen by an individual. South Dakota's decision seems to indicate, then, that the state has a right to speech which the individual does not. This is clearly bullshit. If the state has set the precedent of letting political messages on its property, then individuals should be able to use political messages on the property, as well. To argue anything else is clearly a violate of free speech, since the individual in this case would not be allowed to express a view which the state is allowed.

I hope that this goes to court, honestly, because it clearly wouldn't stand, and maybe, just maybe, we could get all those bullshit "In God We Trust" messages off plates too.

An excerpt

The stones which lead out into these waters are built heavily on Kristeva’s Approaching Abjection, the first chapter of Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Abjection is a concept of a nameless other, and by its very definition it is resistant to definition – I will define it, for purposes of simplicity here, as something that is understandable only as other. Early in her book, Kristeva says that it is “The spasms and the vomiting that protect me” (Kristeva 3), describing the abjection of food as a “basic” form. She later speaks also of the corpse, which is the ultimate form of abjection (it expels the self, and so we try desperately to expel it) and other examples – all of them are united by the common bond that the abject is that which is expelled or rejected. She also briefly talks of the “exile”, the deject, who exists as the abjected, who “strays instead of getting his bearings” (Kristeva 8). These, I believe, are two sides of the same idea – to abject, I argue, also means to be deject. While to abject is to get rid of an other, the other is rarely something indefinable: the concept of the abject cannot be bound, but the abjected often has a corporal form, be it food, a person, or that which was a person. To abject, then, is to deject another, to turn the other into a stray – but since that other, once dejected, is not a mere something but an object, a ‘real’ item rather than a concept, the person who abjects creates two categories: I and the Other, and to abject is to automatically remove oneself from the possibility of the other, and thus deject oneself from whatever the other may be.

I'm so hungry, I could eat half of congress.

GOP Debate

Romney is young-looking and well spoken, but I'm not clear where he stands, and his mormon past will hurt. Still, he has points for appearing less ancient then the other front-runners.

Giuliani moderate positions will turn off the hardcore base but will help bring back a middle ready to shun mainstream conservatives.

Thompson for some reason is pulling very well.

McCain is stuttering and old.

Paul would never get the nod, he was at the wrong debate I think, though if he had the clout of Giuliani going into this thing he might have done very well.

Everyone else is pointless.

I think Romney won, Giuliani close behind. McCain hurt himself badly.

It's a Prison Break!!!

The American Prison system is becoming a huge, bloated mass, ready go pop like a big gray towering pimple and spread criminals all over the world!!!

Okay, maybe not quite like that.

But it seems clear that the American system of justice is unsustainable. Our criminals often re-commit, we have many of them, and they are very costly. At some point the amount of money poured into it will become to much. This isn't a real threat right now, just like our defense spending, despite being massive, is also not a threat to the American budget. We just make to much damn money. But supporting programs with excess spending just because we can is a recipe for failure. It is not an adaptable system. If the country hits hard times and we can no longer support an expensive prison system, what exactly do? A country can't just release prisoners. They're prisoners. It may not have been a good idea to put some of them in prison, but once they're there, it isn't a good idea to suddenly release a great number of them.

As I see it, the American prison system has two major problems. First, the creation of criminals has gone out of control. This is not to say more people are doing things which are wrong - it is to say the state is saying more people are doing things wrong. The creation of a criminal is as much the responsibility of the state as the individual, because without the state in existiance to put people into prison and to enforce the law, the criminal does not exist (nor does the prisoner). Yes, people still do things considered to be wrong, but killing someone and being a murder are not the same thing. One is the action, the other is the title/label gained by the action.

Not that I'm arguing people shouldn't be put in prison for murder. But what about putting people in prison for drugs? Burgerly? Petty theft? Drinking and Driving?

The criminal is an element in society which is deviant. In many cases, this deviance is obviously unwanted. Murders and rapists are deviants from social norms who are dangerous and who most people would want to put behind bars. But deviance has many forms besides murder and rape, and America seems to have confused the criminal as a deviant for the criminal as THE deviant. Why in the world would we put people in jail for pot? People who smoke pot are not violent and at worse do nothing good for society. The black market for the drug stems from it's illegal nature, much like the ban on alcohol in the 1920s caused an alcohol black market. But people who smoke pot are considered deviant - and thus, America seems to think they should be criminals.

I'm not sure where this consider for deviance comes from, though I think generally that American is simply a more conservative country than many other western nations, and as such it both holds more actions as deviant and is more likely to punish them by criminalization.

The other problem with America's prison system is the American since of individuality and personal responsibility. Just because American society considers actions deviant does not mean prison is the only possibility. Certainly, the fact that the deviant portions of society can be rounded up into jails has a great symbolic effect in that it allows American to point to a sort of geographical feature which contains that which society does not want. Yet that does not have to be the case - a similar stigma could be applied to rehabilitation programs. People in drug rehabilitation are hardly considered to be the best society has to offer. But the prison system obviously prevails.

The reason, I think, is that Americans do not wish to take responsibility for the fall of others. It a very economical argument, actually - we're all responsible for our own welfare, and by looking out for ourselves, we actually increase the welfare of society as a whole. That is the basis of American individualism, an invisible hand which is not just economic but also social, promoting the best society has to offer through their own hard work and thus insuring that members of society have a reason to work hard. A sense of personal responsibility is essential to this idea. An individual, it is thought, is responsible only for themselves. Society had no responsibility to them - and also, that individual has only limited responsibilities to society. If you become homeless, no one should have to catch you - but you should not have to catch those who go homeless.

This sort of view on responsibility does not have any room for promoting rehabilitation. If rehabilitation was promoted, it means the society has a responsibility to keep people from being deviant, and to help them reform to the social norm. In America, that just doesn't fly. We don't want to reform people who fall - either they reform themselves, or they don't. Either way, Americans do not see it as their responsibility.

If America ever is to get rid of it's prisons, one of these two factors would have to change.

Uh...

So first there was this. It is (ahem) porn, so don't click on it if you're in the middle of the library.


Then there was this:

"I've always thought that porn was really amazing abstract representations of human sexuality, something like a fever dream, but this just takes it to a new level. I'm impressed by how dehumanized and absurd this video is. Human sexuality has become not only alien to intimacy, but alien to the human as well. I admire the honesty of this othering of intimacy, but I grow deeply concerned for society as a whole."

The internet is a very strange place sometimes.

The last episode of Battlestar Galactica Season 3 is awesome. Just saying. All Along The Watchtower just popped up on my playlist and reminded me.

You're telling me things

I wrote something.

Some people hated it.

Some people loved it.

What the fuck am I supposed to do with it?

I have this story called "Home Movie" which I wrote a few weeks ago and submitted to the campus student-run journals. They both published it, and I've recieved a few comments on it. However, I also shared the story on a creative writing forum where the promptedly tore it apart. I have to admit, I found their critques rather stupid - they appeared unable to comprehend what I'd written. Still, having all these different responses to something I've written, espically when opinions are so extreme, makes it heard to judge what I should do with it. If anything.

It's always judge to something you've done. Bias is obvious. In the five years since I first wrote a story I've been convinced that what I just made was the greatest thing I've ever done. Of course, a few weeks later when I've written something else, I suddenly become disappointed by what I'd previously written. Which tells me I need to practice more.

Lately, though, I haven't felt that. Which I think may mean I'm reading to start sending shit out to publishers so I can try and get something published in a FOR REAL literary journal. Not that I'm going to get paid for it or anything, but it's helpful for later one when I write my Great American Novel - you have to build street cred, right?

Maybe not. As I said in my first post on this blog, I don't my choice of career intersecting with my writing. Do I really want to come to a point where writing would be my JOB? Where I sit home all day and type?

I don't know - what would I write about?

Gizmos and Wallygags

I just figured out how to put pictures on this thing, which is pretty cool. Otherwise I have nothing to report. With an apartment lined up half my stress is gone. Of course the other half is still there, but you know, I'll get a job SOMEWHERE (this of course means my job may not be the best for awhile...)

And I have nothing to rant about. Except for the fact that Guitar Hero II is hard and my arm hurts.

But my life just became a little better

We have an apartment in Portland. Hurrah!

Woe is the World

As I've had to do more reading about the current state of world economic affairs, I've started to come to a very depressing 'conclusion' - it seems that morally, we're fucked.

Here is the problem. It is clear that liberalization does not work for everyone, and it is also clear that liberalization has actually made the world less equal, and not more. The West thought that by spreading democracy and free trade - by encouraging people to make their own political and economic choices - that the world would become better off. It seemed to make sense, after all, it's worked very well for the West. Unfortuantly Africa and South America have not been advaced by liberalization, and the East Asian success stories have only be success stories because the state controlled their slow advancement into liberalization, and built effective industries along the way. I I believe that, due to the increasing inequality of the world, that liberalization is not a moral system. Free trade has never been free - the theory seems sound, but the more powerful countries load the dice by refusing to agree to any agreement which is entirely in their favor. There is, after all, no reason for the United States to sign a trade agreement with a much smaller country if the terms are not in the favor of the U.S. - the U.S. isn't going to sink because it failed to sign the agreement. But the smaller country just might.

The anwser, then, is for smaller countries to forget about free trade and start promoting their own interests through state-directed programs aimed at getting domestic industries on their feat, and becoming less dependent on foriegn investment and loans. Stiglitz's 2006 book called "Making Globalization Work" calls for these measures. The problem, however, is this - I don't think that state directed development is moral, either. East Asia state directed development to become successful - however, East Asia's period of development was also one marked by social inequality and repression. Park Chung Hee was not a nice guy, as far as I can tell - he often used the secret police to break up labor unions which threatened to strike because of low wages. China, another example of a state-directed economy, is also hardly a good example of moral government (if you haven't caught on, I consider democracy the most moral form of government). Also problematic is Brazil, which (although it eventually dropped the ball on it) used state-directed development to grow in the 70s-80s - a period of military dictatorship. The only example of a country which enjoyed significant development without some sort of dictatorship is India. I suppose that's hopeful, but India has also had some problems (some people are, rightly I think, wondering if it's democracy will remain intact), and it's growth, while good, was far from stellar. In addition, India has a population resource that other countries just don't have access to. So while the growth of state-directed countries like South Korea may have been stellar, I can't recommend it as morally sound.

So what do we do? What do we promote? Every time I say that liberalization needs to stop, in the back of my head I think - yea, but the other alternative may also be just as bad. The anwser, I think, may actually lay in America - it developed using protectionist measures while maintaining a democracy. But then again, America has always had access to a low-wage or no-wage labor force and had a huge amount of land to exploit. I'm not sure if slavery and immigrants are equal to the sort of labor repression seen in South Korea during its development, but the two could have something in common.

To bad I'm an Atheist - it'd be great if God could just waltz down and fix everything.

"The rising popularity of text messaging on mobile phones poses a threat to writing standards among Irish schoolchildren, an education commission says.

The frequency of errors in grammar and punctuation has become a serious concern, the State Examination Commission said in a report after reviewing last year's exam performance by 15-year-olds."

I can't wait until internet lingo becomes the norm. Of course by then we'll probably all be dead.

Three more people dead in Kansas, part of what now seems like a constant headline. It is always the same - X dead, X injuried, attacker was an angry young man.

Gun violence took an upswing in 2005-2006 and it doesn't seem like its going to end. But I'm not talking about gun crime. I'm talking about these crimes against society, crimes that are motivated not because of a grudge against any particular person (though a particular person or group of persons may be singled out) by against society in general. Virginia Tech, Columbine, and the string of mall shootings share certain characteristics. The young men who commit these crimes are social misfits. The people who end up being attacked have very little association with the person committing the crimes. The crimes happen in public spaces. And the people committing the crimes go into them with a death wish.

I have to admit I sometimes just want to punch a wall. That sometimes I find myself wishing that some idiot would try to mug me so I could kick their ass. These are wishes not associated with reality, and I am not an angry person. I don't think I've ever been in a serious fight, and I don't look for one. Yet I still feel these urges, these wishes that something would happen, something tragic, so that I could come out the hero. They are rather sick wishes. But why do they exist? I have a few theories.

The first is masculinity. Young men in American are given very confusing signals about their gender identity. Men are supposed to be powerful, but the power which is suggested is impossible. This is probably an over-compensation for the perception that modern men are weaker than their more ancient counterparts. The modern young American male knows little about survival in the wilderness and hasn't been trained for combat of any sort, armed or unarmed. The masculine identity can become very confused becuase of this - on the one hand, a young man is told to become physically powerful, but on the other hand, the reality of modern society is that men very rarely use physical power to get ahead in life. Men no longer protect their women - the very idea that a woman needs the protection of a man has become absurd among the majority of people. Men don't need to bring home the bread, either - there is no reason why women can't perform the same jobs men, besides the fact that discrimination still makes it harder for women to get ahead in higher-paying jobs then. So what is the responsibility of the man? What is he supposed to do? Culture has over-compensated for this loss of masculine power, and with most obvious example being the prevelence of Anime among young men. Dragonball Z is, frankly, a horrible show, yet it enjoyed great popularity because of it's portrayal of absurdly powerful male figures doing combat. I remember being enthralled by the show during my teenage years because of it's powerful male leads, and I remember dreaming that I was the superhero, destroying my enemies with great balls of energy. Some of my friends really went off the deep end with this - one, whom I haven't talked to in six months but who is, I assume, still unemployed and lives at home, used to spend hours trying to conjure destructive energy with his hands. These shootings may be a manifastion of frustrated young men trying to express physical power against a society that tells them they need to be physically adept while at the same time provides them with almost no socially acceptable ways to use aggressive phsyical ability.

Another possible cause is linked with America's concept of itself. Our country went into the new millenium believing itself invincible and loved, a gentle giant that could crush anyone or anything it wanted but, of course, wouldn't. This perception was based of a cult of technology (which covers no just American, but most of the Western world and also some Asian countries), a belief that technological advancement would end all of America's woes. Yet as time as progressed its has become harder to ignore the signs that this is not the case. Technology does not make problems disappear, and knowing about technology does not always make you more capable. The failure of technology builds upon the failure of masculinity because technology was seen as a way of replacing the physical power masculinity once represented. The phallic missile replaced the phallic sword. As time progresses, and technology fails to solve all of humanities problems, technology also fails to solve the problems of the young men who had begin to use technology in hopes of increasing their knowledge and thus, their power.

Lastly, there is the problem of class. Fight Club, I think, really nailed this one on the head - it portrayed men (not all of them young, the protagonists were presumedly in their mid-20s) who had entered professional middle-class life with the idea that through hard work, they would be able to make their dreams come try, and would be able to increase their power. American told it's young men that they could become rockstars and wealthy businessmen, if only they would work hard enough - and it also implyed that those who failed to become powerful failed only because of their own deficiences. But obviously, not everyone can become a rockstar or a CEO. Most people are left in middle-class jobs with little real power and a poor perception of job security. But Fight Club was made in the mid 90s - since then, the problem has become even more severe. Now children believe that they must make a splash ASAP, and teen are growing up wanting despretely to make a mark in the world as soon as they can. Any sign that their ability to reach their goal of stardom can cause a great deal of apprehension and fear. In addition, the contridiction between the goals society portrays as correct and the actual accomplishments society allows people to achieve undoubtedly is confusing. Society tells people from a young age they can be great, but public school is terrible for reinforcing these notions - instead, young people feel like they're being held back.

Perhaps there is some other cause. These are not events which are easy to quantify. They are tragic and difficult. But I hope people think about them, because the more we ask why, the closer we come to an anwser.

Rising through steam banks
the pickup truck evaporates
the instant it hits the volcanic
wall: step in the veranda
of my pores, the great hall
known as my stomach.
The volcano
now in a wedding dress of snow
belchs spectacular ashen tears
into a God of a sky.
Consume - Digest -
the pickup truck condenses down
creeks fat with volcanic ash,
and in three great flips
of fire, says 'I do, I do, I do'

I am a writer. This is something that I occasionally call myself. I call myself a writer because I write a great deal, and also it's because that's what I want to do with my life. It is a strange title and I'm not sure what it means. 'Writer' much like 'poet' or 'painter' is a rare title that is not connected to profession, but rather to practice. A doctor without a degree and a practice isn't a doctor, and an electrician isn't someone who fiddles with the wires in their home occasionally. But I feel it perfectly fair for a person to call themselves a writer, even if they're not widely published.

Identifying myself as such, it's caused me some problems in my job search. Not tangible ones, but I can feel it in my heart - what am I trying to do? Writing is not the sort of skill most employers look for, unless I'm applying for one of those rare technical writing or journalism jobs - but ironically, the vast majority of my job experience is in customer service. As for writing, I have no job experience. I've been published in the campus journals a few times and I also wrote for the paper at Butler University, but thats about it, and that's nothing compared to my customer service past - Pearson's Manager looks good because of the title and the list of responsibilities you might at some point potentially have, and then I've also worked in food service, and I was a summer conference worker, a job where I spent half my time trying to keep the conference guests happy (the other half consisted of doing semi-petty tasks for the Res Life pantheon).

So, I'm probably not going to be a writer, professionally. Entry level technical writing jobs are hard to come by. I could do some freelance on the side, but thats about it. As a result, I feel split - one half needs to advance professionally, but the other half needs to advance my writing skills. I'd love to start sending out manuscripts to places that would publish (most literary journals don't pay, however) and get my foot in the door. But I need more time, and I don't know if I'll have it.

Yet, I'm not exactly dreading a 'normal' job, a stupid full time position. In my writing I've found that a lack of perspective is maybe my biggest obstacle. I am not well traveled. My job experience is probably on the high side for college grads, but still, it's all been the same industry. I'd love to get a job doing public relations for some non-profit, but even if I'm selling security systems for Brinks (one of the jobs I applied for) thats fine too. I just want to get out.

I'll have to see where the pieces fall. Time is going to become my greatest enemy.

Tonight was my last night at Domenico's, and it went just fine. I can't say I'll miss the place, as it did very little for me besides provide me with good part-time income. Which is fine, I guess, it's a job, what more can I expect?

So now I am unemployed. I'm going to have a lot of time on my hands, which means more time to worry more about all the upcoming events, and the events which have already taken place. Beginning a career, graduating college, moving to a new city, getting married, these are also great steps in life, the kind of things that people write novels about, making light of, look at from a far with a hint of worry - and I'm going through them all right now. I'm a little rattled. More than a little rattled. I'd be less rattled if I had a job and a place for Natasha and I to live, but both seem to be caught in this catch-22. Most jobs don't want to hire unless I can interview in person, and most rentals don't want to rent to someone who doesn't have a job that pays 2.5x the rent per month. Needless to say, this create a bit of an obstacle for moving. I don't think I ever realized until now how bad the poor have it in terms of mobility. I hope my money holds out, and I think it will. I think.