Tee-Hee

Did you know that if you use google's "Map This" utility you can scroll around all the way to other parts of the united states. I just spend 5 minutes scrolling from my current reisdence to my more permenant residence.

Technological Miracle

You may know of my pencil holder/alarm/clock/thermometer/calander. I mention it as often as possible so that I can revel in how gloriously multi-functional it is. I've discovered a new function of it's power.

It beeps every hour on the hour. In recent days it's been beeping in a commically slow way, I knew that this meant that the machine was dieing, but it was funny so I ignored it. When if finally died, a few minutes ago, I pulled out the battery to see what kind it is. I then pushed the same battery back in.

Now the clock is running at full power.

It's a miracle!

Project Exodus

This is a story that’s the sum total of a lot of thoughts that have been rolling around in my head for a good long while now, so settle down boys and girls it’s story time.

Way back in… Sophomore year I think we played a game in drama. One person was “it” they then left the room, and another person was chosen from the group to be the mark. The person who was it would ask “If this person were a blank what kind of blank would they be” style questions and try to guess who it was. I actually did quite well at this game because I knew that if I asked something strange that person would usually look towards the mark in order to think about it. That’s not the point though. When I was the mark and Mr. D was it, he asked of Chase “If this person were a profession, what profession would they be.” It may not have been that exactly, but it was something close. I was universally agreed to be the schools mysterious person, which I, in my role as the Patron Saint, loved because it meant that I was well known for being mysterious. Chase’s response was a great example of Chase’s insight, he said “Alternative Medicine.” If I can isolate a single day where I began considering that as a career I’d have to say it was that one.

The problem is that as much as I am a mystic, and I assure you that part of me will always come first, I’m also a scientist, and an embittered harsh realist. I’ve always liked alternative medicine, but I’m quite clear on the knowledge that there is a dividing line. If you have cancer you’re going to need the advanced science of Western medicine. If you have a cold I know a way to cure it using steam and a few select herbs. If your problem is psychosomatic, western medicine won’t help you.

While I do have some knowledge in both fields already I don’t know enough to say that I’m qualified in either. I also feel that if I’m going to go into alternative medicine I should have a background in scientific medicine. One thing I’ve always said about mysticism, something that has annoyed more then a few of my fellow mystics, is that you can’t rely on it.

I’ve also been thinking about the other careers. I’m growing gradually less and less content with engineering. I can’t properly put this into words yet, but when I dropped math I had a sense of liberation from some predestined point, I was able to look at this problem and have a true sense of freedom about it, and I’m not sure engineering is what I want. I also don’t think an English degree is what I’m after. I enjoy writing, I’d like to take a few creative writing classes, but it’s not something I’d put 4 years of my life in to.

I’m also beginning to think more and more then taking time off would be good. I stick by my theory that everyone should take a gap year, but it’s a bit late for that, so I figure I’ll just take mine mid college. My original plan was to take it after sophomore year, but my father raised an interesting question.

Why Wait?

It’s those simple little questions that always get you ya’know? I didn’t have a good answer for it either. The more I think about it, it may be a better idea to take my year off during exodus year two. I’d prefer to do it out of the house, and probably in Seattle as well.

So what am I going to do? I’ll need a job. I’ll need an apartment. I may continue to take one class a quarter, tuition is based on number of classes taken anyway so this won’t be a big setback in any way.

Eh… it’s just thinking for now. I’ll get to some legitimate thought on the subject later. It’s not a definite plan, but it seems more and more likely that it’ll be my degree. Phram. D. That is.

They're Not Even Trying

The following is a direct quote from the end of the song "Wu Tang Clan Ain't nothing to Fuck it"

"Wu Tang Slang. Chopping Heads Boy. It ain't safe no more.

Peace."

Seriously, don't they go over these things for continuity at least once?

You know what makes this even better. There's an underappreciated cartoon called Stroker and Hoop. There's an episode where they work for "MC Homocidal Rapist" and one of the best jokes in that episode was when he left, saying "allright, lets go murder our enemies. Peace." It turns out that wasn't a joke, that was scriptural accuracy.

Oh. Even more tangents. Did you know that Futarama stole my hip hop name? The hip hop name thing was a game played during one fatefull lunch in Mr. Marcus's room early on in my emery career. I made my name "Noticably F-A-T" which I thought was a genius parody of "Notorious B-I-G" who, interestingly enough, I know of despite having never heard any of his music. It turns out that in the 7 leaf clover episode of Futarama there's a brief appearance of a character who goes by the same call name. And So in accordance with the ancient sacred doctarine of hip-hop I am calling him out.

'Cause that bitch is frontin yo. Treadin on my style spoilin' my flava. If you or one o' yo crew be gettin this then you gots ta' know. It's oooon bee-yotch. That busta's about to get my size 15 up his narra' ass. He got nothin', and he best to check himself 'cause I'm fi'in to wreck that bitch. Me and my gat gonna roll on his ass.

Peace.

(BTW If you're going to point out that this slang is circa 1992 Go to hell. We all know that when hip hop became rap it stopped being good, which is why I don't listen to nearly any modern hip hop)

Conveyance

I've recently acquired speakers. It's renewed my interest in music. Part of me is worried how much stimulus I draw from songs like "Let The Bodies Hit The Floor" and "Feur Frei" but whatever unholy indicators you can draw from that are cancelled out by how much I enjoy songs like "Bumble Bee" and "Mr. Wonderful."

What would be most terrifying is the conclusion drawn from someone who enjoys both of those. Remember that the one who listens to angry music may be violent, but he's still mentally stable. The berserker isn't the best maniac, the berserker with the my pretty pony Bonnet who gets his homicidal orders from the trix rabbit is by far the crazier of the two.

This reminds me of something too. In my post gaming increased madness state (it's come to a balance BTW) I'm more prone to laughing to myself externally. It's part of the running theme that madness liberates my internal dialogue from it's internal component.

So before I was a giant dark person who walked around not looking at anything with a look that most people interpret as depression.

Now I'm a giant dark person who walks around not looking at anything in particular grinning to himself.

Which do you think is crazier?

Lol

It turns out I'm not the only on on the blessed network that appreciated MC frontalot. For those of you who aren't familiar he's one of the best amongst the Nerdcore. Most well known for using the common hip hop tool of sampling, but rather then sampling things like Biggie or Grandmaster Flash, he has samples from things like The Simpsons, or Mel Gibson movies. The thing he does best though is kamikaze comedy. I mean, look at his name. I found another which I thoroughly enjoy, and am hence posting here because... Because I damn well feel like it. It's only one line, but it's nerdcore genius. Not only is it clever, but it serves the key purpose of all nerd culture which is to mock the anti-parallel culture, and while it could be said that mocking hip hop is too easy, it's not easy to do with sublty.

Sought skinny little beats but retuned with the fat of the land
Now I got a swollen hip hop gland
I suffer Hypocondria I think my beats is sick
Don't trip don't trip don't tri- tra-tri-trip.

Indulgence, Tactical Errors, School Supplies, and the Joys of Exporting Cost

At around 10:30 a.m. this morning I thought to myself "I've got time, I think I'll go get a better then average breakfast from Jack in the box, then walk to class from there." Normally this would be fine, but as I was walking out the bus rolled past. It's important to understand that the 70-73 all stop at this stop, and go all the way up the Ave. When they're available I take them, when they're not I don't make a deal out of it. So I casually stepped onto the bus. It takes 15 minutes to get that far up the Ave, so I pulled out my D&D/Physics/Math/Psych/HW/Drawing notebook and began engaging in the last of the notebooks many functions.

This is why I didn't notice I had gotten on the 49.

This is also why I missed psych today.

There was an interesting bit of trickery which eventually got me back to the Ave, about 1/2 way through class, and lead to me having to admit I had just enough time to get to class for it's dismissal. But I was on the Ave so I took advantage of it.

Near the end of first quarter I purchased a truly ridiculous amount of school supplies. At the time I was convinced I wouldn't need to buy any more for the rest of the year. I was way off. Luckily I remembered this as I was walking past the UW bookstore. So now what was once my array of a dozen identical black pilot razor point pens, and was until minutes ago my one pilot razor point pen, has reached happy medium at 5 identical pens.

I mention this particularly because if you look at conrad's writing utensils you'll see that his pens are diverse and with each one the writing will vary slightly. My clock/thermometer/calendar/pen holder has two types in it. My identical pens. And my identical silver mechanical pencils. I like to think of it as "Appreciation for my tools" but it's just as valid to call it "Obsessive Compulsive Disorder"

One thing I noticed after laying out my pens note cards and a booklight to replace my burned out bed light (I plan to duct tape the book light to the underside of the top bunk) is that school supplies are a bit expensive. This was only a noticed, instead of a noticed and was troubled by because my school supplies are covered by my UW bookstore card, which magically takes that expense and inflicts it horribly upon my unsuspecting parents. Once again I'm still in a larval stage where I'm parasitic.

I'm going to go study now, next week is another test week, but this time I'm both prepared, and not mired in homework. I intend to do much better then last time.

Second verse same as the first.

A point charge q = -5 µC is surrounded by two thick, conducting spherical shells of inner and outer radii a₁ = 0.3 m, a₂ = 0.4 m, a₃ = 0.7 m, and a₄ = 0.8 m respectively. The inner shell is uncharged; the outer shell has a net charge Q = -10 µC. At this point in the problem, the potential at infinity is unspecified. Do not assume it is zero.

Question C) V(a2)-V(a3)

I entered. 48170. It was wrong. I didn't understand why, but I had 2 other sub-sections of this problem to deal with first so I decided to come back to it. In the middle of a plan which is destined for failure which involves doing the field voltage integration for every one of these problems something occured to me.

-48170

Correct.

I really should just enter every awnser in 4 or 5 diffrent nearly identical forms every time. Most of the mistakes I've made on this are gramatical, not scientific.

Also as a quick side note, I'm really tempted to assume that V(infinity) is 0, I've even got a mathmatical basis for the assumption, but the question says in bold type not to.

Vent

I'm working on a problem dealing with the voltage of a uniformly charged ring. Now I'm essentially certain that the total charge is going to easily determined by the formula V = (1/[4*pi*epsilon Zero]) * (Charge/distance) when I know that V=400 at the center of the ring. I know this because I've figured out the trick that allows you to treat it in much the same way as a point charge, a trick which is allowed because V is a scalar not a vector. I typed in my awnser, It's wrong. I spend 20 minutes trying to figure out in the name of all that is holy why?. So it turns out the awnser wasn't 7.117-9 It was 7.117e-9. I assure you something is going to be destroyed over this.

Correction

I'm declaring myself offically cured. I also have to make one correction to the previous story. It was more like 3 hours of theta meditation and 3 hours of actual sleep. In either case I've recovered my ability to sleep. I'm also going to take a thursday lab session today so that I can practice my newfound skills.

I'm never going to live this down.

Sticking with the Max Can't Sleep principle I've resorted to alternate tactics. I can't say for sure what this technique is called, but I know it as theta brainwave meditation. It's a more effective form of sleep, but it's hard to attain that meditational state without just falling asleep. My current gradually improving condition provided a sort of training wheel which allowed me to get 6 hours of ultra sleep last night, after which I wasn't tired.

I really need to master that trick.

So I'm laying in bed musing in the early morning when I hear a noise at the door. After a few seconds it becomes clear that this is a human screwing with my door, not just the wind, so I roll from my casual musing lying down pose into my crouched and ready knife drawn but still concealed behind the pivacy screen pose.

I may have a bit of a paranoia problem.

After about 18 seconds of whoever it was screwing with the door they leave. They never opened the door, they just did something, then left. At around 8 when I got up I discovered that the door was locked, as though someone had locked it from the outside with keys. I don't think Conrad did, and I know I didn't.

This is going to sound bad, but on certain very rare occasions I've been known to leave my keys in the door. It only happens when I'm extremely distracted, but that 's a great one phrase description of yesterday. I really heavily doubt that it happened because I would've seen them in the door in the various times I went through the door in the 12 hours between the last time I unlocked the door, and the time of the incident. I doubt it but it's possible.

Well now it's 8:30 and I can't find my keys. I've never lost my keys before, and they're probably around here somewhere, but nonetheless I can't find them.

So this is the horrible possible combination. What if I left my keys in the door, then during the night/day border period someone came by, locked my door, and stole my keys. Think about that. I left my keys in my door, then someone stole them. I'm not saying it happened, I'm saying it's possible, and if it did happen, I'll never live it down.

The art of being Ness

Does anyone here know the game Earthbound? Old School RPG on the SNES, great game. I could rant about the game for a long time, but I have a point this time. When you beat up an enemy in earthbound it didn't say that it died, it said that it either "Became Tame" or "returned to normal" depending on whether it was an insane animal or an insane person. So Ness, the hero of earthbound, didn't kill people he cured them of their crippling insanity through the use of violence. Violence with a bat. Now I'm not certain if I've properly detailed my belief that I could improve the quality of the world at least 5 fold if I just wandered the earth with a nerf bat beating the ignorance out of people, but concise to say that it's a deeply held conviction.

Earthbound 2. Maxonian Redemption. Coming to an gamestop near you*.

*I'm coming there to beat up the clerk for his unyielding devotion to counterstrike

Steps Toward a Brighter Future.

While playing around on the vast pachinko machine that is the internet one particularly interesting shiny ball of knowledge fell in to my lap. Today is national mental health day. I know this because a member of my clandestine brotherhood trades their shadowy robes for a Ben and Jerry uniform in order to commit the crimes against humanity that are necessary to maintain his broadband subscription. Ben and Jerry, in another of their harebrained schemes, give out free ice cream on national mental health day. It's one scoop per customer at a time, but if you were to get back in line infinite times you could in theory get infinite ice cream, but the head ache caused by consuming infinite ice cream would probably kill you.

In either case I, in the last two hours of national mental health day, am going to do my part for this most noble cause. All I need is the approval of the council.

[Mobius] We weren't prepared for this, let it be severed.
[Sulfaras] It is a necessary sacrifice for the Greater Good.
[Slyz] I am so freakin damn sick of going to that class.

And click.

Wow that was suprisingly easy. You'd think they'd have a "Are you sure you want to toss four weeks of work" button. I also feel less stressed already. That may be the ice cream though. I don't know where Ben or Jerry live, so I had to pay for mine but it was a good deal.

You may also notice that I used my UW bookstore card again. This may seem confusing because I use it only to buy school supplies, but there was a very key reason.

I've been printing things on Conrad's printer. Before that I was printing on Eric's printer. Until today I hadn't contributed a thing. Conrad's printer decided to play a lively round of up yours Max, so I was forced to purchase a new ink cartridge. So don't think of it as Max being frivolous with his card, think of it as paying $10 a quarter for essentially unlimited use of a printer.

This is a bit of a tangent, but the phrase "Steps Toward a Brighter Future" is the motto of the MX C-U-B. Much like the Maxonian C.D.S. CUB has a double meaning. The offical meaning for it is "The Maxonian office for Civil Understanding of Biology" there stated purpose is to develop more advanced bioengineering techniques for the benefit of the Common Man(tm). The alternate meaning is "The office of Cruel and Unsual Biology" a name that they were given because of the total lack of medical ethics rules in the Maxonian Royal Empire. As a quick refresher, C.D.S. offically means "Cyborg Defense Squad," while the alternate, an much more accurate, name is "Cyborg Death Squad." Their stated purpose is something along the same lines as a swat team, which is one of their many functions, but their main job is enforcing loyalty by any means necessary.

Glory The Maxonian Royal Empire, Glory the the Infinite Legion.

Tactical Retreat

It's looking more likely that I'll drop Math 125. I've already completed the necessary math for psychology, pharmacy, and all forms of writing. If I do decide to go the engineering route, but I haven't decided that yet, and the credit won't be worth the hit to my GPA. It's not only that I'll have to average in my 2 point something expected math grade, but it's dragging down my other grades.

Also I'm still semi-sick, but I'm becoming more and more convinced that it's psycho-somatic. A regular disease knocks you out, it dosn't make you tired but awake.

I've also essentially stopped my caffiene intake in order to try and get on something approaching normal sleep wise, it isn't helping. I'm going to have to deal with whatever it is in my head that's after me before I can fix it.

Phone

I finally found my phone. Again. I'm considering throwing it into the fires of mount doom.

I've listened to all of the messages and they all appear to be either quite old, or things that I've responded to over e-mail. I've also deleted them all so I can recieve more next time I lose my phone.

Idle, yet heavily important, thoughts.

Being sick gives you a lot of time to lie in bed thinking. I don't spend enough time doing that anymore.

I'm thinking of dropping MATH 125 for this quarter.

It's a course that pains me, because I have such conspicuous talent in it, but a greater equal opposite is my contempt for it. I've found that my skill has become a burden to me, it rubs itself in my face. I can't escape some sense that with this gift I was given the responsibility to use it.

I am a gifted child too. I've always known that, but only more recently has it begun to weigh on me. I beat out at least 90% of the world when I was born an upper middle class American. Then I was given intelligence. I think I may be in the top 1% of humanity luck wise. But due to my morality this gift, this power, is responsibility. Let me make it undeniably clear that this is not a pentacle transaction, This link is not inherent, it's something within me. But power is also freedom, and freedom is choice, so do I have the choice to discard that responsibility? Is it ethically acceptable to not do what I may be best at in order to suit my personal preferences?

I don't know. I really don't. I know that I could be getting a 3.5 in that class if I was motivated, but all the greed and fear I have can't do it. I need positive motivation to excel in the face of difficulty, and I just don't have that right now.

Dropping it would also help my other grades. The vast majority of my excess grief is a byproduct of math, either by the destiny it implies or the actual course itself. Dropping it would give me some semblance of freedom.

But dropping it would be giving up. Dropping it would be turning from the clear path. It's a choice that frightens me, because it's something that can not be undone, and whose implications will echo throughout my entire life.

I need time. Time to think. Above all else the thing I've learned from this is that everyone should have a mandatory year of real world experience before college. And judging from those around me (and myself too in all honesty) they should be given this time to mature.

I'm not sure that I'll do this, by no means is it guaranteed, but it's on the proverbial table now. I'm going to think more on it, but I have to mark it down to give the thought real form.

Ugh.

I'm sick. The Goo drips from me, The Dripping Compels me!. Luckily it's another online activity in psych monday, so I'll only miss two lectures, and lectures are the least signifigant hits when missed.

goo........

Foiled Again!

So I left today to go get my hair dyed. I knew of four places that could potentially provide this most bizzare service.

1. Closed.
2. Didn't speak english well enough to conduct buisness with, but I think she said they can only do blue as a temporary thing.
3. Closed down entirelly, and in the process of being demolished.
4. Closed.

Blasts! You've won this time sunday scheduling, but the war will be mine.

Forgotten Realms Community College

I was playtesting an adventure Mike wrote today. I was playing as a sorcerer, because I love sorcerers, and one interesting point arose when Chris accidentally called me a wizard, to which I responded: "Whoa! I am not a wizard. I'm a sorcerer. I didn't spend my life rotting in a library playing with spirographs and phallic symbols, I went to sorcerer school."

Now that's a fully coherent joke until the thing about sorcerers school. The key thing it know is that wizards use magic as a ritualized science, while sorcerers use it as an art. They don' t have spellbooks, and they don't use intelligence as their casting stat. They're artists, charisma is their casting stat and sorcery normally has no practical training, so a sorcerer school makes no sense. Which is why this comment was met with weird looks. However, I was able to pick that up.

"It's a 2 year associates degree at a party school."

And that lead to all kinds of great stuff. One key thing to note is that my sorcerer was dragonblooded, so he could breath fire as a spell. So the image of me doing a holding a blunt motion and saying "Hey man hit me up" *Getsures to indicate fire breathing* "Dude You are the MAN."

Think of all the other crazy possibilities though. If your friend was walking to the front of the auditorium to give a speech you just know somebody would cast grease on the stairs. People casting Daze and dancing lights, then sitting in a corner of their dorm room tripping and saying "The Colors!" Some jerk casts sleep on a group of his friends and writes on them. Your frat brother runs up and color sprays you right before your big date. They'd also have the ultimate pick up lines. "Hey baby, Charm Person."

And there's that one prank that would make the sorcerers of Dragon house heroes forever. That night they stole some magic item from the enchantment building and very carefully traced a lingering magic aura. Then the next morning there's a sign on the main walkway that says "Detect Magic" and when you do there's a clear lingering aura in the shape of a giant wang outlined against the administration building. Can't you just see the dean the next day?

DRAGON HOUSE!!!

And that's just with level 1 spells. Imagine what would happen if there was a sorcerer grad school and spells like Invisibility, Levitate, Touch of idiocy, and alter self could do. And fear the sorcerer Ph.D.s They call you in to their office, then trick you into turning around, then they cast gaseous form and float away. You look around confused, start to leave but they've cast Arcane lock on the door. All you hear is the hyena like cackling of someone who's finally put his 9 years of education to good use while you morn the fact taht Knock is a 2nd level spell and your only a sophmore.

A thousand words

I was thinking about the key people who have inspired me over the years, people who fit either into the category of hero or friend, and I realized something

You people are all crazy. And you all look crazy.

I can prove it too, the pictures are hero's first, then friends, in no particular order.

Brian Clevinger:
Brian is someone I admire first and foremost for his work as an artist. I can think of three separate occasions where I've held up his book Nuklear Age and shouted "YOU BUY! YOU BUY NOW!" I also check his website more then daily. I enjoy his webcomic immensely, but I've drawn just as much if not more from entertainment from his newsposts. However I also admire him for what he's done as a person. That part is a long story though.
That freakjob is Brian Clevinger.

Jhonen Vasquez:
There's no better way to justify the fact that Vasquez is crazy that having you read his works. However I can't pay to have everyone who reads this read his stuff, so I'll just give you the names of the books. Those alone show you how crazy he is. Johnny The homicidal Maniac, Squee, Invader Zim, I feel Sick, and Filler Bunny.

That's Vasquez. Actually it turns out that he shares my love for random wild hair changes. When I found out about this I searched carefully and found one more picture.
So have confirmation one the blue hair thing. Once again I think I have an unhealthy obsession.

Jerry Holkins(Tycho) & Mike Krahulik(Gabe)
These guys are people who had a vague dream, ran with it, and revolutionized the gamer industry and subculture. They're paragon nerds. I only have one picture of the actual humans behind them, and it's not as good rez as the first time I saw it, but it's a good one. You can't properly tell from this picture, but if you see a higher rez picture of them wearing their formal wear they look horrendously out of place. If you've read crytonomicon you may remember a scene where Waterhouse describes two excellent suits walking down the stairs with the heads of his friends protruding oddly from them. This picture is a perfect example of that situation.

Now on to friends. I'm keeping descriptions short here because I don't feel like writing things that are long enough to properly describe these people.

Now I know what you're thinking. Max, Don't you have a picture of Ted where he's not flipping off the camera? No. No I don't. I have an amazing surplus of Ted Flicking me off pictures. Oh wait, I was wrong, I have one.
I'm sure that's loads better.

I don't have any photos of Hannah where she looks happier. Emo freakjob.

This is a quick tangent, but I love the word Freakjob. Freakjob, Wackjob, etc. Great term.

Shlomo's particular craziness can be perfectly described in one phrase. "Delusions of Grandeur." He is Not Spiderman.
Nor is he superman.
I'm not sure anyone would be surprised if Kevin actually did that. It's also an interesting note that this is the only picture I have of him.
I play D&D with that guy. DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS. With that.
I also play D&D With him. He's actually not as crazy as he looks. I include him mostly so that I can complain that he can't make a character without exploiting the rules of the game. I'm yet to see him make a non-broken character. It's almost impressive how well he can do it.

That's everyone that came to mind immediately as I was writing this and that I had appropriate pictures of. If your not on the list please don't think it implies anything.

I'm also aware that I have just ripped on most of the people closest to me. Don't take it too hard, it's a joke you bastards.

King of the Iron Fist update

I’ve learned another character in Tekken 5. His name is Steve fox, and I’m a fan of his style because it’s so radically different from the others. You’ve got people who know ninjutsu, Tai chi, Tae Kwon Do, the dance of war, the gentle way, the art of the empty hand, and the art of the silent fist. Well Steve uses Manchester Boxing. The Art of Rogering the bullocks. He’s also the only character who can’t kick. If you push the kick button he weaves depending on which way you were pulling when you pressed it, and which kick button you pressed. This can lead to all kinds of great tricks. It also makes him the greatest character to be an asshole with. When Feng does his run charge shaolin kick maneuver which devastates most people, you can just weave to the side and punch him in the kidney when he lands. It also leads to some truly beautiful maneuvers. Kick and back causes him to do a matrix style sudden lean back. Hitting light punch at the bottom of the lean causes him to punch upwards. If you time it right, you can dodge a kick by leaning under it, and then punch them when they’re over you. It’s hard to time but devastating when it works. Actually I think that summarizes the character over all pretty well, hard to time but devastating when it works.

I don't feel like writing a title

Think of this post as an upgraded form of Idle thoughts. It's a collection of half formed rants.

I'm in a mood that annoys me to no end. I'm bitter and moody and anti-social. I'm dismissive and bleak and spending too much emotion doing it. I'm Emo. Now if you don't already know, I freakin Hate Emo people. Correction, I hate emo guys, I still don't' like emo culture, but for some reason I'm yet to meet an emo girl I don't like. I'm also not fond of emo music. They're the unholy epitome of the abomination that is modern Goth. And yes, I know, I bear the trappings of Goth culture, and subscribe to a lot of Goth philosophy, but the key thing I have against the goths is that I understand it. I'm not being dark because I'm creating an image, I'm just dark. Actually, while I'm on it, I don't like goth music that much either.

The Predator rocks. I've been thinking more about it ever since my oblivion character gradually took on Predator like characteristics, but I just (in the past 2 hours) re-acquired the game Alien vs Predator, which predates the movie by several years BTW, and I remember why I liked the predator the most.

I don't think I've really gained anything by ditching CoV. I was able to delay for a full week before taking up another video game, but all I got was bored. Then I got a less satisfying replacement experience. I'll give the issue more thought before I take any action, but I-7 comes out soon, and there's a good chance I'll start playing again when it does.

I7 is a content update that adds mayhem missions, thugs masterminds, and electric brutes. All 3 of those things interest me.

I bought the gospel according to Juadas. It's a book I've wanted to read for... 5 years now. I remember thinking that the rest of the apostles were too quick to harass him when only 20 pages ago we were being told to always turn the other cheek, and a few chapters back there was that thing about judging not lest ye be judged, and it hasn't been more then 20 pages since we we're told not to cast the first stone. I haven't read it yet, but I'll let you know if I learn anything signifigant.

GAAAAAAHHHH!!!!

So when I had removed all of the things that were on my bed and transfered them to my Eric's bed shelf, taken my mattress off, moved the mattress to rest on top of Conrad's bed, removed the boards that make up the frame my mattress sits on, and shifted the beds frame I was finally able to FIND MY PHONE. I hate that phone so much. I'm going to make a rigging for it out of twice and permanently weave it into my vest. That'll show that bastard who's boss.

Expletive Deleted

It's really a shame that I can't write these from anywhere. If I had been writing this immediately after leaving the math test you would have heard an epic oratory of pure anger and outrage. The full effect wouldn't have come across in text, but I think you would have gotten the point. When I do poorly and it's my fault I'm filled with disappointment. That happens more often then it should, and that fact makes me slightly more disappointed. But I put serious effort into this one. I legitimately tried, and still no. There isn't a key reason I failed either. I ran out of time, I didn't understand part of a question, I didn't spend enough time studying Riemann sums. That's not the real word, but I was told by two T.A.s that they weren't important and that I would essentially never need them once I knew integrals. I was angry because I tried, and I failed.

But anger is a poison. I released it, and now I'm just tired. It's more then that, I've been releasing a lot of anger recently and the after effect builds up. I'm world weary. I'm 19, I'm not supposed to be world weary. I'm supposed to be drunk and irresponsible. Well, I've got half of that down. I'm going to go now. I'm going to lie down for a while, rest, and reflect on my position. And then I'm going to look for my phone. Seriously, where the hell is my phone?

Conclusion

[Please begin reading from the post entitled "The Six"]

I'm leaving my room now to go begin my final preperations examinations demonstrations and meditations. For anything you adress to me between now and whenever I next post, you can assume my response is as follows

Hollow Blood

[Please begin reading with the post titled "The Six"]

I'm about to change from the manic studying phase to the note sheet phase. The note sheet phase is where I summarize 3 chapters on one page in tiny text. They allow one page of notes, and I intend to take that inch for several miles. In either case I'm taking a brief break between phases, and I'd like to give more information on the hexpresso process.

The key thing to note is that I did not go fully without sleep this time. It's true that this is occasionally done, but that process only works if you started the day at 3/4 or more rested. I started yesterday at roughly 1/2 rested. This means that I needed to get some sleep, because if you run pure for too long the hollow blood effect will begin to impair your test taking abilities. The hollow blood effect is my universal term for the negative side effects of caffeine use that aren't the crash. I call it this because if you run pure for a long time you'll get this weird feeling in your blood. It's as though your body is normally made up of a giant mesh of water filled bubbles, but now those bubbles are filled with air. It's actually just dehydration, but in a normal dehydration case you'd get exhaustion and thirst before you get that, but because you've been drinking large amounts of caffeinated liquids you wont' get thirsty or tired, you'll go direct to the hollow blood feeling. While dehydration would be a detriment on a test, the last phase of consumption is pre-test high water intake. This makes the hollow blood feeling not an impairment on tests, but you will get it back once you get up and start walking again. Hollow blood usually isn't an impairment when test taking, but further effects of running pure which aren't the hollow blood feeling, but are filed under the vast umbrella that is "Hollow Blood Effect" can be. In either case I slept from 11 p.m. until 3 a.m. For those of you who are wondering how I was able to sleep only 4 hours when I started the day at 1/2 rested I turn you to my ancestors. My native American ancestors this time. At around 10:30 I started drinking, and by 11 I had drunk nearly 2 liters of water. This means that 4 hours later you wake up with a sudden sense of urgency. I haven't used this trick enough to calibrate water to duration properly, but I'll probably go through the trials on that later.

I think that's the whole of the message I was trying to get across. I leave you with one key warning though. The hollow blood feeling isn't an impairment to stationary intellectual activities as long as you do the final stage hydration, but it will remain a major hindrance to physical activities for multiple hours, until you've taken in a lot of water and given it time to enter your system. This is why I was decked by 50 cents worth of DDR last time. I forgot about the hollow blood, which does very little to my pinball and Tekken abilitys

555-55-55855-55-5-Senor-Mortgage-Today

[Please begin reading from the post entitled "The Six"]

First of all I'd like to mention that rotational integration is a subject which my Math lecturer, Math T.A., a diffrent math T.A. that I went to because mine has office hours during my physics lab, and my high school calculus teacher have all agreed is the hardest thing in Calculus. I hate it.

Math is deeply damaging to my psychological health. I've entered the "Senor Cardgage" phase of my studying regieme. Everything internally is fine, but whatever interface I'm using to connect to the outside world is broken. Wernikes Aphrasia. Possibly the other one. Cardgage is a character from Homestarrunner.com, He's strong bad if he were a crazy hobo. Included below are links to the cartoons featuring him.

Kind of Cool
Senor Cardgage Mortgage <-Editors Choice
Senorial Day Sale

Oh, and I'm on a 2 or so on the caffination scale.

Cont'd

[Please begin reading from the post "The Six"]

Ahh break time. And I've reached the reckless probing of the internet portion of my lunacy. I love the internet. For no reason here are some of my greatest finds.

Dimentia.

[Please start reading from the post labled "The Six"]

I begining to feel the effects of running pure. A moment ago I was siezed by a sudden violent complusion to correct my clocks. It was nuts, Out of nowhere I looked at my computer's clock, then at my clock/alarm/thermometer/calander/pencil holder and realized that they disagreed by 4 minutes. I stopped mid question in the practice test and corrected it. Then I went and corrected my alarm clock. I don't think I could have stopped myself if I'd tried.

Freaky no?

News from the front

[Please begin reading from the post entitled "The Six"]

I speak to you now from the "Holding at +1" phase of this invocation of Hexpresso. For those of you who don't know, which is everyone, let me explain the slider. The key thing to remember is that it's expoential. The Diffrence between 0 and 1 is only half the diffrence between 1 and 2.

0 is a state of normal awakeness. If you're well rested and uncaffinated you're at 0. The scale goes up to +10 and down to -10. At -10 you'll spontaneously lose conciousness, at -8 you're incredibly sleepy and likely to fall asleep at any given time when not actively doing something vigerous. -7 through -4ish are levels of caffene induced stupor that are critically hindering, -3 through -2 are hindering but manageable, and -1 isn't that bad. Positive 1 is slightly more awake then normal. I find that I can run more effectively at positive 1, and spend a great deal of my time there. Positive 2 and positive 3 are greater states of mental alacrtity. Actually, when not sleep deprived and on concerta I'd say I'm somewhere around positive 2, but I don't have time for a full rant on the comparison study of caffiene and concerta. Positive 3 is where the consequences of raising your level begin to show. You'll lose a lot of focus to bathroom trips, and you may begin to feel a little nervous. At +5 I begin to enter a cold sweat phase, and begin to get the first signs of twitchy-ness. It's not spasmatic yet, but I would have difficulty holding my hand out level. Positive 6 is usually acompanied by a heartrate which is raised enough to induce a very mild sense of false nervousness. This isn't always true, and with practice it goes away. What dosn't go away is a sort of muscle lock. It's almost like being spontaneously stiff. You'll have a hard time moving fluidly, but will develop freakish reflexes for moving jerkily. Positive 7 is probably the highest point you can really raise yourself to. At positive 7 you'll beging twitching, but you're mind will be firing with the reaction speed of a psychotic rabit in an artillry range (formerly mine field). Beyond 7 things begin to get hazy. 7 is when you'll first begin to experience what I would call premature synaptic firing. Focusing yourself becomes a complex dance to make sure your brain flies along the right path. At 8 it gets much worse. You'll almost certainly be twitching at 8 as well. I've only gotten to what I would describe as 9 once. It wasn't fun either. The muscle lock gets bad enough that it's hard to walk properly. Your brain is firing constantly without doing anything, just going from nowhere to nowhere and back again. You twitch in a way that isn't really violent, but it is freaky as hell. You'll dehydrate yourself within 30 minutes due to the cumulative diaretic effects. It's like being tazed but over a long period of time. I've never reached positive 10, but I assume you die of heart failure.

The other key thing to know is that the number is made up of how caffinated you are, and how much actual sleep you've gotten. Right now I'm running "Pure" meaning that I've got essentially 0 actual sleep. This is the problem with having to spend all week doing your other homework to make room for doing your math homework early in order to make room for studying for your math test. And anyone who thinks I should've just done my homework last week would kindly direct themselves to the two tests I had last week, after which they should proceed directly to hell. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

The key thing when running pure is that you still get the increase in mind-speed, but you lack a sort of concious coherence. It's a lot like dimentia, but it's a layer of dimentia over what is slowly becoming a perfect left brain machine. You can also embrace the dimentia, something I've found helps me when doing right brained projetcs. The longer you run pure the more you lose. The epitomy of this is entering an almost trance like state. You're speed enhanced brain drops down to a subconcious thing, your concious mind essentially disolves, and you attain an almost Zen state of unconcious action. It's tricky as hell, but do able. I'm not shooting for it this time, I'm not in the proper state to achive it at the proper time for the right duration, but I've used it in the past with amazing results.

I'll keep you guys updated as I go through the rest of the phases, mostly because I need excuses to give myself breaks.

Genius!

http://ckjcwf.ytmnd.com/

Also if you go to the webcomic page for bigger then cheese. www.biggercheese.com their vote button for the webcomic top 100 is also genius. The button is labled "Start" it's part of thier running theme of having the start command make the vote button perform some amusing animation, then changing to vote. I think it's a good system.

The Six

[Mental Entity 1] Prime this is madness. We agreed long ago never to do this on a Wednesday.
[Mental Entity 2] He's right. If we do this we're setting ourselves up for a huge fall.
[Mobius] It doesn't matter. It's the only solution.
[Prime] Only?
[Mobius] Take note of our condition. We've exaughsted all of our motivation. We have a massive buildup of frustration. Despite our efforts we're simply not prepared for this.
[Slyz] And we can't afford to drop this one. We started out in a hole, we're clawing our way up to mediocre.
[Mobius] We simply have no other option.
[Prime] *looks questioningly at Sulfaras*
[Sulfaras] As much distaste as I bear for this, I have to agree with him.
[Prime] Then let it be done. Let the six keys be turned, the six locks unlatched, the six words spoken and the six seals broken.
[Mobius] *Silent self satisfaction*
[Slyz] Allright, this stuff is always a crazy ride.
[Sulfaras] May God help us.

Hexpresso

Explaination

I think I may have to explain one of my earlier blog posts.

First of all Mitch Hedberg is my favorite comedian of all time. He died on my birthday a year ago, heroin overdose. I had actually made plans that once I was 18 I would go see him because I felt like a comedy show didn't justify the use of a fake I.D. Then on the day that I turned 18 he died. Once again, I am the Patron Saint of Irony. The role of saint isn't always fun, but I'm dedicated to laughing at tragedy.

The bit that's important here is from his first CD "Strategic Grill Locations."

"I used to have really long hair and people thought I was high on stage. Because people associate long hair with drug use. I wish long hair was associated with something other then drug use, like an extreme longing for cake. And then strangers would see a long hair guy and say 'That fucker eats cake. He is on Bunt Cake.' Mothers sayin to their daughters 'Don't bring the cake eater over here any more. He smells like flour. Did you see how excited he got when he found out your birthday was fast approaching?"

So, I'm not growing out my hair for random change. I'm growing it out to express my extreme longing for cake.

Trends

I have spent an amazing amount of time pacing around the 4 square feet of open space in my room saying "Where the hell is my phone!"

Gahh!

Test Results

On the psych website it lists everyone's scores. It dosn't list the class average, but it does list everyone's scores, so I spent 5 minutes with excel and found it out myself.

Class Average: 32/40
My Score: 32/40

So essentially I did the epitomy of Okay. Not good enough, but not bad enough to reach crisis levels.

On the physics test I thought I had done horribly, until I realized that they hadn't finished posting the scores yet. I'll let you know how that went once I know.

Predator

In Oblivion one of my characters is a thief/mage. This means that I spend a lot of time sneaking around with my bow waiting for some unsuspecting shlub to get into my crosshairs. It also means that I spend a lot of time using two key spells. In order to allow me to sulk in the shadows without constantly bumping in to things I have Nighteye, which makes everything visible, but also makes everything blue, and in order to make sure that nobody notices I'm skulking around in the shadows I have chameleon, which makes me not quite invisible, but translucent and blurry. I haven't figured out how to yet, but I fully intend to set my crosshairs to be a little triangle of dots.

I Miss Mitch Hedberg

I'm not growing my hair long as form of change in life. I'm growing it long so that people will think I have an extreme longing for cake.

Delay

There will be an additional delay as I locate my phone.

Retraction

I'd like to offically retract the thing about leaving my phone off. It dawned on me earlier that I may not be able to get it dyed until this weekend.

I went wandering this morning, looking for a place to get the dye job done. I don't have psych today. Correction, I don't have psych lecture today, I have an online activity due by 5:30. Meaning I have an online activity due by 2:30 because then I have math, a break from math to do physics homework, then physics. In either case I don't have anything at 11:30 today. I found a place, it's called Hair Masters, so I figure if they can't help me nobody can. Maybe hair paragon.

I also saluted a bus.

I was walking back to the dorm and bus stopped next to me. In giant letters overlayed on a cup it said "Zai Chai. A healthy alternative." I stopped, and saluted it with my cup.

"Jack in the box, an alternative to health."

The Council, again.

I’m going to use the council to discuss certain things in my blog. I don’t fully know how to describe the council, but I feel that you can get the hang of them through repetitive exposure. There are some ground rules to remember though.

Slyz, Mobius, and Sulfaras are the only ones who are always present. The other entities are always there, but they aren’t there enough to manifest. They’re only an active force in the debate while they’re “On Screen.” Council discussions are regulated by and usually a conversation with an entity that’s known as Prime. Prime can be thought of as the bridge between waking reality and my own mind. Prime is not a facet of my mind, he’s the active thought portion of my mind. It’s also important to note that every one of the entities is essentially a creation of prime.

The basic mental image I have of the council is a group of people in a pool of light. They stand at the edge of the circular pool of light, prime stands in the center. The dimensions of the pool are inconstant. The pool of light is in what I would describe as an infinite void. It’s the same effect you’d get if you turned on one overhead light inside of and entirely darkened warehouse.

One last quick refrence. It may help if you think of the primary three this way.
Sulfaras: Good
Mobius: Evil
Slyz: Trickery/Chaos

If you do that though it is of dire importance that you keep in mind that it's Good and Evil as equall necessary forces neither of which has more value then the other.

Mixing Shit Up

I’m going to go dye my hair blue. Also I’ve found my phone, it was dead, and I’m going to leave it off until after I’ve re-toned myself. This is something I don’t need to be talked out of.

Why?

Stagnation. It’s my eternal foe, and I’ve lost sight of that. I used to say to myself all the time that the worst thing you can do is stagnate. I don’t know when I stopped, but it’s been far too long since I’ve reflected on that. So now I need change. How do you seek change? It’s an ephemeral concept. I’ve always sought it in one way, I make some dramatic change to my hair, and I then more significant change seems to follow for no good reason. My current hair change plan, prior to azuring it, was to grow it out indefinitely. I still plan on doing that, but it’s too gradual. I need sudden shocking change. So I’m going to do this, I’m not going to think very heavily about it, and I don’t care if I end up regretting it. Worse comes to worst, I’ll just cut it all off again.

That’s too much reason, I’m doing this and to hell with the consequences. I’ll make sure to post the results.

A Musing on Generations.

It seems that there is a pattern amongst each generation to defy the conventions of the one before it. As one grows up they go through a natural cycle of defiance, and this cycle is echoed in society as a whole. However this thought is marred by the use of a faulted operator. What exactly is a generation? We could arbitrarily assign them to be every 20 years, but that leaves some people born only weeks, days or minutes apart in opposite generations. I would propose we define them by certain key events. There is a critical period in each person’s life between the ages of ten and twenty where they develop at an alarming rate. The psychological differences between a fourteen year old and a sixteen year old are immense. Think of key events in the collective consciousness, events that change the lives of the entire country. Someone who entered post 9-11 America at the age of 10 may well grow up to be a blind fervor patriot. Yet someone from the same economic and cultural backgrounds who entered post 9-11 America at the age of 16 may grow up to be a blind fervor anarchist. Significant events like this can change society immensely, and can create a real dividing line which makes those whose ages differ by as little as 3 years clearly part of a different generation.

This brings me to the Vulcans. I don’t know the whole story of it, but it’s my understanding that Vulcans only mate every seven years. This means that in Vulcan society generations are sharp and clearly defined. It also means that if one Vulcan is 21, they will never meet a 20 year old Vulcan, or a 25 year old Vulcan. This also means that every generation will have a clear identity. They can work together as a generation, in a system much more clearly defined then the lowly terran socio-biological systems. Think about their school systems, their voting age, their marketing. You aren’t marketing to the precious demographic; you’re marketing to the demographic that exists. There would be clear seven year pattern of rise and fall of demand in certain items. Once every seven years diapers and the infinite errata that go into child rising become obscenely valuable. 15 years later depressing Goth music soars as Vulcan children everywhere dress in black, light candles, smoke clove, and complain that nobody understands them. 21 years after that the Vulcan liquor market soars. Birthday is probably a national holiday. It’s the day that everyone from generation X was born. It would also open up a vast new venue for studying Vulcan psychological change over time. Three generations ago Vulcans at this age liked this more then that, the gradual change in consumer desire, common knowledge, etc. It would also make it exceedingly hard to lie about your age. Unless you can look a full seven years older or younger, you’re not going to fool anyone.

Then again, the Vulcans aren’t real, and this is just another idle musing. I enjoy my idle musings, they keep me sane. Well not sane, but at the proper level of insane.

!

One thing I forgot from that last Idle thoughts.

Tragedy is funny in spanish. Think of the most horrible scene of outrage you've ever seen. Now think of it as the same scene, but the thing being screamed is "por que!?" You know that's funny.

This all goes along with my theory that comedy is always rooted in tragedy. So far I know of 3 ways to make the change.

Tragedy + time = Comedy
Tragedy + Spainish = comedy
Tragedy + happening to somebody else = comedy.

Idle Thoughts

I've been thinking about several things. That's not different from normal life in any way, but some part of me still feels the need to give an excuse before I go into an unmitigated rant about pointless things.

First of all I’m suffering more from my withdrawal then I did last time. I’ve been thinking heavily about the nature of my addiction. You have to understand that world of Warcraft was a clearly unhealthy obsession. I was compelled to keep playing it for weeks after I stopped enjoying it. In short it was crack. I left it, and felt good, but it was 3 days before I had latched on to another game of some sort. D&D online was methadone.

I’ve also realized more and more that it wasn’t just my insanity and my energy that was drained into the online void. I’ve become more irritable recently. The most notable side effect of this is a sudden spike in the amount of profanity I use. There’s another word which I find myself shouting 20 or so times a day though. The word is “Gaahhh!” It’s like I started to say “God” but halfway through I got too frustrated and just let it trail off. I do this over the most minor things too.

”Damnit people, hit clear when you’re done with the microwave. Gah!!”
”Where the hell is my other sandal? GAh!!!”
”I ordered a large Damnit, Gah!!!”

Now that I’ve properly constructed a web of false excuses allow me to admit that I’ve recently acquired the game “Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.”

There are several things I’ve learned from it. First of all I’m disturbed at how readily I’ll steal things from the internet. I didn’t even think about it. It’s probably a bad sign. Today I’m steeling data, but tomorrow it’ll be car parts, then knocking over liquor stores, and then I’m just a stones throw away from pocketing a stadium.

You heard me.

I’ve also learned something about myself that has some serious negative implications. When I wasn’t playing video games, I was wasting time otherwise. So I’m not an addict, I’m lazy and have a hobby. It all comes back to the problem of motivation. What am I going to do about it? Nothing. Kind of. I’m going to tough out the rest of this quarter drawing heavily on my Samurai focus mentality. Excessive use of it essentially always leads to a buildup of stress, but really how is that any different then what I was doing last quarter? I plan to spend a lot of the summer thinking, and the rest of it learning how to draw. I have a deep seated urge to express myself artistically, but I’m chained by my own material existence. My problem can be summed up entirely by the Futarama episode “The Devil’s Hands are Idle Playthings.” I’m going to go watch it then go to sleep.

Also I’ve officially stopped trying to make my blog have any literary value. I just don’t care any more. I’m just too unmotivated nowadays.

Holy crap, Word accepts nowadays as a legitimate word. That’s nuts.

ARGH!!!

Emerald City Comic-Con. It was... well a few weeks ago. I could've gone. I should've gone. I Could've met Vasqez Damnit.

VASQUEZ!!!

this is an epic level failure on my part.

Sweet Zombie Jesus!

Happy Easter.

That's the first thing, the second thing is another rant.

You people, collectively, need to stop saying "Why do they call it good friday? Jesus died on that day, why is it good?" I'm going to tell you. And from now on, never ask me that again.

Jesus died on good friday, but have you forgotten that the key reasons Jesus died was to cleanse the sins of humanity? Jesus knew Judas was going to betray him, he said so at the last supper, and he said that it was okay, because it was part of the divine plan. So Jesus's death was a good thing, because through his death he gave all of humanity that was present on earth at that time, or had ever been, acess to heaven. It goes on to say that the first thing he did when he died was go down to hell and free everyone who had died before he had been around to cleanse them, allowing them all into heaven.

And another thing, you're not allowed to question what the phrase "I am the lamb of God" means anymore, because I'm going to tell you. As with the other thing, this is a question you're no longer allowed to ask me. It's part of this same story. Sacrifical lambs are a practice as old as the temple. People sacrifice things to serve their holy end, usually purification. God sacrificed his only son, hence cleansing the whole world. Hence, Jesus is the lamb of God, because he was sacrificed to cleanse humanity.

One final note. This is all written from the perspective of an active catholic, which I'm not, but it was written to explain to you what they mean when they say these things, so it was a necessary sacrifice to get my point across. This blog is the lamb of Max, Hallowed be his name.

Amen.

Lost in Translation

I'm reading over my blog. Several things bug me.

I'm a better writer then that. I should stop transcribing my internal dialogue directly, when you lose the complex timing and nuance of speach it isn't anywhere near as well presented.

The chronology of it bugs me, I'd like page 1 to be entry 1, and you read down, with the bottom of the last page being the most recent post.

That post about the council sucks. It dosn't get my point across at all. I'll write a better one later.

Also anyone who understood that Lost in Translation was reffering to the mathmatical operation of translation (moving something from one place to another) in refrence to my intended blog restructuring is a NERD.

Clever Title Not Found.

Okay there are several things to say now. I’ll put them in chronological order as best I can.

First of all I owned that test. This isn’t me just giving a “yeah I’m doing fine stop bugging me” thing either. It wasn’t over the hard Gaussian Flux field charge shape conversion stuff either. It was over the relative charge basic field mechanics and charged particle in a uniform field things that I was able to grasp instantly. When I first saw them. In December 05. I went robot pimp ninja Zen master on that test.

By the way, Robot pimp ninja Zen master, very formidable opponent. They appear from the shadows and give you a solid steel chi infused bitch slap.

Also, did you know that word won’t accept the word Zen spelled as zen. It thinks the lower case is a spelling error. Strangely enough it doesn’t do that for god.

Anyway, I left the test full of confidence. I had written out exhaustive explanations of why I’m right, and somehow I always feel better about an answer if it’s long and painfully detailed. I then decided to go to the arcade as a reward/celebration.

It went pretty well at first, but I decided that I should keep up my exercise regime.

Hold on a sec, I have to pause to let my mind stop laughing at the idea that playing 2 dollars worth of dance dance revolution 3-5 times a week, or walking about 2 miles a day, is a “Regime.” Okay we’re clear.

Anyway, do you remember that earlier post where I was thinking to myself about the excess energy, and I proposed exercise, but reminded myself that it wasn’t that kind of energy. Yeah, some part of me forgot that. This was the conversation I had after stumbling away half dead from playing 3 songs, about 5 minutes, worth.

Sir! Critical Status.
What?
We’re getting distress signals from our body.
On screen.
[Body]: SYSTEM ERROR. FAILING, Failing, Faiiiilllinnnng!
Do you remember how you were drinking nothing but caffeine drinks, urinating every 20 minutes, and never replenishing your water?
Yes.
What part of that made you think you wouldn’t be dehydrated?
Touché.

So I’ve stumbled back here. I can feel myself sinking below the impaired threshold on my caffination levels. It makes it really hard to type actually, God bless spell-check. I’m going to go do… nothing, for a while. I’ll get back to you later.

Oh, right. It’s also worth note that if the rest of this week is any indicator, my current confidence in my performance is just a giant setup for a horrendous failure. I don’t feel like going into the details of it right now, but this has been a bad week.

Weird age

I know that I should be jamming more electronics into my head now, what with T-minus 50 minutes and all, but I feel the need to stop an reflect on a few things.

It occured to me that I only have 350 days left where the quick "dosn't solve anything but removes the need for further thought or discussion" response to my problems can be to simply call "Teenage Angst." Then once I'm 21 people can just say "You need a drink." This'll lead to me having to explain over and over the complex nature of why I don't normally drink, but I'm prepared for that. The question is this. What do you do if you're 20 years old and you've still got angst. Young adult angst? Does that sound to anyone else like a euphamisim for hangover?

The second thing is much more relevent to my impending trial. At around 9 this morning I hit the wall so to speak.

Okay. I've memorized the three chapters of the book this test is over. I've also summarized them in tiny writing on my one page of allowed notes. I have two mechanical #2 pencils, an eraser pen, a calculator, extra batteries for the calculator, and 8 scantron froms in case 7 of them break down. And I've gone through every practice test that they offered.
Good.
Yes good, but It's 4 hours until the test and I'm still full of nervous energy.
Exercise?
Not that kind of energy. It's a mixture of fear and caffinated cold sweat.
Have you synced your caffination levels?
Yes. I'll hit something around a 5 in time for the test, which is the best possible level that can be attained without the use of hexpresso, or other hazerdous pseduo-intoxicants.
When is your drop off scheduled.
I should be in the illusionary plateau formed by the top of the porabola from around 1 until about 2. After that I'll begin dropping at an exponentially increasing rate until I get back down to default, which I should hit no sooner then 2:30. I should hit my impaired phase at around 2:45 and my useless stupor, or "Sleep drunk" phase at around 3:15, 3:30.
Excellent.
So what do I do for the next 4 hours?
Um....

So yeah. That's my issue. I ended up pseduo resting, carefully callibrating my caffination, and generally twinking myself. I then went back to studying, and I've been doing that on an off for a while now. I'm at 20 minutes until departure now, and I need to buy another bottle of vault to manage the careful balancing act of my harshly abused metabolism, so I'm going to go now.

Mandatory

And, just because I can't seem to do anything this week without refrencing futarama, remember the one where they go to the egyptian planet, and the natives are consulting the wall of prophecy.

High priest: Great wall of prophecy, Reveal unto us Gods will that we may blindly obey
Other priests: Free us from thought and responsibility
High priest: We shall read things off you
Other priests: And Do them
High Priest: Your words guide us
Other priests: We're dumb.

Unforseen Consequences

There's one thing that I had forgotten about electromagnetics.

It's a fascinating subject, so many interesting applications, strange functions, force at a distance etc. etc. etc. The thing I had neglected though is that it's freakin hard. I can harken back to high school where I would be the only one to get it right, but that's when I'd look up from a scrawled series of half-formulae and say

"It's one over four pi little backwards three thingy times twice the quantity of the charge times the distance between the endpoints over little r squared."

I also recall one glorious day where the entire day was solving one rediculously complex circut problem. after about 10 minutes of trying to draw it on paper I shoved my notebook violently off the table and took over the secondary whiteboard. With violent slashig motions and manic hurried scribbling I constructed a vast and complex circut for no good reason. When I looked up from my masterwork of scientific fury and asked that it be checked I was told that it was correct, but it wouldn't be accepted until I drew it using straight lines and legible numbers.

An more and more I feel the need for a giant wall that I can write on. A wall sized whiteboard, or just a blank slate wall that I can spay paint without consequence. Then again this is just the idle dreamings of a man who lives in a 10 x 20 room with another person and more furniture then I really want.

Also, as a cryptic side note. I finally understand Gauss's Law again, I understand it after the homework, but before the test. So at least this is one time where I can get a low homework grade and not be struck by the immidiate feeling that I should've worked on it more, now it's low because I'm just not smart enough, a problem which is completely beyond my control.

Ahh sweet futility, free me from the burden of responsibility.

Clarifications

It's important to note that the post entitled "Dream" was a dream. Nothing more.

It's also a good indicator that I've got my madness back though. That was a nightmare, a dream where I was someone other then myself, and a dark prophecy all rolled up into one. If that's not insane I don't know what is.

It's also worth note that April 19th, the date from the entry of the audiolog that began to play just before I woke up is the day before my math test.

Oh also, My math test is on 4-20. tee-hee.

That one show about that guy with the thing who does stuff at that time.

Allright. I'm enjoying my post-math homework being turned in pre-physics test final hour studying blitz caffination based wakefulness quasi-opiate mindset. As such, I'm going to post about something irrelevant that won't have any long term value.

This is a post that started with a quote, but I don't think the joke gets across well enough in pure text. It's from a certain science fiction cartoon show which was genius but cancelled because it was too intelligent for the fox audience. It's the source of such memorable quotes as "No fair! You changed the results by measuring them!" And "Spare me your space age techno-babble Attila the Hun," and the classic "Choke on that Causality!" I'm not going to name the show, I don’t' know why, but I am in no mood for reason, and I feel like it. Oh, speaking of quotes, there’s also a discussion of the upcoming presidential election which goes:
"Two terrific candidates eh morbo?"
"ALL HUMANS ARE VERMIN IN THE EYES OF MORBO!"

It's also the source of some of my favorite snarky wisdom quotes. Things like "You can't give up hope just because it's hopeless, you have to hope even more, and put your hands over your ears and go LA LA LA LA LA LA LA!" Also the belief that when playing God you have to use a light touch, like a pick pocket or a safecracker.

The quote that started this exercise in pointlessness is as follows. "A living thing, and all living things have dignity, and a spark of the divine" Not all that funny eh? Well if you've figured out the show by now, and it's not like I've made any big effort to stop you from doing that, then you'll probably know the character, so you'll understand why the full quote is funny.

"A living thing, and all living things have dignity, and a spark of the divine"
-Lur, Ruler of the planet Omicron Persei 8.

Dream

I step into the building; it's eerie how normal it looks on the ground floor. Big wall of mailboxes, according to a plaque on the wall this place is called "Lander," named after some wealthy donator. The ground floor is empty, from the brief I got on the way over the victims this far down experienced a form of hysteria; the police rounded them up a while ago. The elevators are offline, I head for the stairs.

When I open the door a kid inside, I'd guess 20 year old Asian male, is sitting on the first flight of stairs, hunched over his head in his hands. When the door opens he looks up at me, his eyes are locked in a stare of absolute horror, but a creepy insane grin begins to spread over his face. He doesn’t move or say anything, just sits there like something out of a funhouse gone horribly wrong. He follows me with those terrified eyes as I climb the stairs. I pass two more people, both unmoving. I'd guess comatose by quick observation, but I wouldn't rule out dead. This case has thrown all the rules out the window.

The Second floor. I step out. There's another kid on the ground across from the doorway. He's curled up in the fetal position, shivering, and saying "so clear, but... so clear" to himself over and over again. He doesn’t respond to questioning. He doesn’t respond to me nudging him in the side of the ribs either. I move on. I turn right out of force of habit; a row of rooms is off to my right, and a larger door in on my left. I head through the larger door.

It looks like it was a lounge, or public room or something. Whatever it is that shell shocked the people behind me hit these harder. I can count... 5 total. All dead. Suicides, they don't look planned either. One in particular is frozen in rigger mortis, his hands on his head, after snapping his own neck. The ceiling in this room is singed in a few places. It looks like I'm one floor off from the main event.

I head up the stairs again; I pass another self inflicted fatality on the way, and one that may have been a combination of hysteria and a flight of cement stairs. It's a lot more then I want to deal with right now, I'll let the coroner decide what happened.

The third floor is even worse. There's a weird smell in the air, a mix of ozone and something burning. I head for the public room on this floor. I pass something really weird. Have you ever seen pictures of a human shadow burned into the concrete in Hiroshima? It looks almost like that, but something that strong should have destroyed the building. And it's just one, someone who was leaning against the wall on the hallway side of the public room door. This makes less and less sense. I hesitate to look any further, but it's far too late to turn back now.

I was wrong. There's a lot more then one. There's dozens in this room, the floors and walls are singed but there are clearly human shaped shadows in the burns. It looks like they were standing in a ring around the center of the blast. There aren't any remains of any of the shadow casters, but there is one body in this room.

Caucasian male, I'd say six and half-ish feet tall, big frame, heavy set. At first I think he was singed, but he doesn’t have a mark on him, he's just wearing all black. He's dead in a way that doesn’t make any sense. No sign of any injury, no toxin, and no heart attack. He hasn't undergone rigger mortis, and his skin hasn't paled much. He's got something in his hand. It's a little recorder, a digital one. I flip to the last recording in its memory and hit play. After a brief period of scratchy silence a voice comes through the recorder's crappy mono speaker.

"The following is the audio log of Maximilian Willson, the current date is... April nineteenth, two thousand six. It's all so clear now..."

Physics homework annoys me

Infinite Things are confusing. The electric field isn't dependent on distance? What kind of God would allow that. I hear by order a neo-luddite crusade against infinite planes of uniform charge.

Teamwork

So if you hadn't guessed I'm a little behind this week. I really chose a bad time to have a bout of depression

Whoa whoa whoa. We didn't choose shit. It's not like we wake up one day and go, You know, I think today will be a hellish miasma of mental torpor.
Yeah, but you get the point.

In either case Monday was really bad timing. Midterms are upon me again, and don't worry I knew they were coming so I won't be able to say "well it caught me off guard" when I blow them. In either case I've delayed some (all) of my homework in order to study for the impending doom in the respective classes. This leads me to my physics tutorial yesterday. I was told by a person who had started the homework that a lot of the answers were zero because they dealt with perpendicular vectors. Well I just spent the last 40 seconds or so putting 0 in to every one of the answer slots on my physics homework and hitting submit. Unlike chem in physics you get an infinite number of potential submissions, so I don't lose anything by doing this. Also, I'm now 1/4 done with my physics homework. Don't you just love it when a group of deviants comes together to screw over the system in which they all work?

Go team.

Zealotry

I've been thinking about it and I've come to a conclusion on my fanatical devotions.

I would do anying Johnen Vasquez told me to do, unless Brain Clevinger told me not to. The Reverse is probably also true.

Brainfreezy

Some of you. Well two of you may recall my old process of Zen diet coke drinking. It's a means of attaining temporary clarity (all clarity is temporary) by a single ultra focused experience. I still remember getting really weird looks while drinking diet coke really slowly with my eyes closed.

It's an experience I've mostly given up. Mostly because I still do something similar.

Remember Johnny the Homicidal Maniac? It's a comic I've referred to several times now. On a related side note I may have an unhealthy fixation on Johnen Vasquez. Anyway, there's a scene in the comic where he goes out for a Brainfreezy, what everyone else would call an icee. He discovers that the machine gets turned off at 2 a.m. and hence he can't get one. He then goes psycho (remember he's a homicidal maniac) and plans to kill the clerk, then kill himself. The point is that he can't have one and hence goes psycho.

I've taken up the habit of getting a brainfreezy at times when I'm feeling unnecessarily psycho. In the past.... 20 minutes I've taken up the habit of doing the Zen flavor mediation thing with them. I like it, and I think it's helping me. It also amuses me for one key reason.

I do get my Brainfreezy, and it stops me from going crazy.

I'm Evil

I'm searching on Vasquez, one of the many people I have a strange obsession with, and I found an interview where he says this in response to a mention of invader Zim.

"Jhonen Vasquez: Well I wouldn't call it a hit cartoon. In certain ways it is incredibly damaging considering the stuff I did before certainly wasn't for kids. I was never thinking "I hope the kids love this," When I was ripping out a guy's intestines. But now I have a lot of little kids who watched Invader Zim whenever they could find it on television. I get emails from kids saying I'm 10 or 11 years old, I love Invader Zim. GIR is cute and I just picked up your Johnny book."

If you've never read JTHM it's a horrific story that could easily destroy the mind of any 10 or 11 year old, most fully adult minds reject it instantly.

The reason I say that I'm evil is because when I read that last phrase, "I get emails from kids saying I'm 10 or 11 years old, I love Invader Zim. GIR is cute and I just picked up your Johnny book." I burst out into hysterical laughter. These are kids having their minds destroyed, but man is that funny.

Warning

Oh, also. The first person who claims that I was suffering from "A Case of the Mondays" will have their heart torn out and stuffed down their throat.

If you could be anything

There's a question a lot of people have told me to ask myself in trying to decide a clear career path. "If you could do any job, without regard to what it paid, what would you do?"

Now I know what you're thinking. Max is going to say this question is bullshit because you have to look into what it pays, and if you don't you're leaving out a key part of the job because the money is the main reason you do the job. Well I'm not. Not now anyway, I do think that, but I have a much bigger problem right now.

You may think, based on previous blog posts, that the list of top jobs would be artist, scientist, psychotherapist etc. Well it's not. Those are all around 7-10 on my top 10. So what's on top?

Supervillain.

Yeah, I know. "It’s not a real profession." Which summarizes my problem. One thing though, and the subject of today’s rant, is the nature of Supervillains and superheroes.

The thing people don't understand is that superheroes need Supervillains. Without an equally super threat a superhero is just some whacked out vigilante in spandex. They aren't even really heroes; they're just a weird variant on cops. But once a supervillain emerges and begins wreaking their brand of highly dramatic chaos it sets the stage for a singular being of immense power to be a hero. They remove the threat, and by doing so become the hero, but the villain always gets away. I don't think that's accidental either, I think heroes know that they need an antagonist against which to be the protagonist. From my understanding the cycle works like this.

1. Villain commits one successful crime or other act of villainy.
2. Hero readies self as a reactionary force against villain’s next act of villainy
3. Villain hatches some needlessly complex scheme.
4. Hero and villain clash.
5. Hero wipes out villain’s henchmen.
6. Villain narrowly escapes.

The Key thing about this is that the villain always gets enough successful crimes to stay in business, while the hero gets enough "I defeated the villain" points to remain a figure of public adore. Besides they must make a fortune on merchandising.

It's also important that the hero have a figure that only they can beat. Think of the collateral damage caused by the average super hero. When superman throws a car at someone, the guy who owns that car doesn’t sue him because he knows that if superman wasn't there he would be at the mercy of Lex Luthor, who would do much worse things then just break his car. Once heroes stop being necessary they lose all of their perks.

Screwed

Part of me is begining to think that even my highest material realm desires may be unattainable. It's a carrot on a stick that I'm dangling before myself. It reminds me of a a line from an excellent song.

Horoscope by Weird Al.

'Taurus! You will never find true hapiness, what'cha gonna do cry about it?"

Tempt

Man it is really tempting to reinstall CoV. It's so easy too.

Sigh.

Options

I am drowning in a sea of opportunity.

The Council

I often analyze my own thoughts in terms of what I call "The Council." It's a group of usually 3, sometimes 9, and sometimes even more mental entities that serve as the grand allegory for my own thoughts.

The 3 key catagories are:

The Sanctified Legion. Lead by Sulfaras, a Paladin.
The Syndicate. Lead by Slyz, a trickster.
The Infinite Legion, Lead by Mobius, the Lich.

It's entirelly to easy to say that Sulfaras and Mobius are my good and evil sides while Slyz is just some other aspect of my personality, but those descriptions fail immenselly. You can understand each portion better if you subdivide further into 9 entities.

Example:

Name. Alighnment
Avatar Image.
Strengths
Weaknesses

The Sanctified Legion

Sulfaras. Lawfull Good.
Paladin.
A crusader of The Light. A champion of whats Right.
Prone to blind faith in established morality.

Meir. Chaotic Good.
Righteous Zealot
A fury of moral outrage. Fights against injustice in defense of the innocent.
Tend to get carried away. Lacks mercy.

Odehara. Lawfull Neutral
Samurai
Imensely focused. Reminds me of my duties.
Dosn't take into account whether or not I'm enjoying it. Constant harsh devotion to duty.

The Syndicate

Slyz. Chaotic Neutral
Trickster
Clever, rescourcefull, nearly immune to depression.
Loses his presence whenever I become stagnant. Slyz has to keep moving.

Gnizmo. Chaotic Good
Curious
Intellectually curious. Highly inventive. Good intentions
Bad things with good intentions, curiosity based compulsion

Ljtour The Lunatic. Chaotic Evil
Lunatic
Passionate, untireing, Focused.
Ravenous, Violent, borderline psychotic.

The Infinite Legion

Mobius. Chaotic Evil
Lich.
Self reliant. Lacks Mercy.
Lacks Mercy. Arrogant. Universal Disdain.

Maxiumus Rex. Lawful Evil
Tyrant.
Harsh Truth.
spiritually dead.

The Advocate. Neutral Evil
The Devils advocate
Can see key faults, and prevent disaster.
pessimist.

Tacit consent

You guys know what a Paladin is right? Holy knight. In either case Paladins in D&D have one key rule. If a paladin ever willingly commits an evil act or allows evil to happen they lose their paladin powers because they're not being holy enough.

I've had a few discussions about how far this goes. Does every character who plays a paladin instantly lose their powers because evil is happening somewhere in the world. "Whoa! Someone in the world is suffering and you're not healing them! Tacit consent, you lose your powers!"

They don't but it's an interesting question. It also applies to me in a current situation.

A friend of mine, the names will not be mentioned to preserve the... Well not the innocent, but to preserve people. She came over and asked for a bottle opener. My can opener has one on it, so I leant that to her. Now I know what she's using it for, and I know that a lot of her problems are liquor based. I don't consider alcohol ethically wrong, but I also think that she would benefit from sobriety. So is it wrong of me to lend her the bottle opener? I have been, and will continue to be there to catch her when she falls, but it seems like I should lose my paladin abilities for this.

Sigh, so many thoughts.

Balance

You know Stewie? Yes family guy stewie. He created a saying that I've always been fond of.

"Then it dawned on me that your bullying was simply the product of inner pain. So you simply need a health dose of outer pain!"

It thought that was a lot funnier before I was on the recieving end of the outher pain.

Not My Day

And now my knee is bruised. Someone* spilled water at the one non carpet section of the floor, the area around the elevators, and unfortunately I have to walk past them in order to get to the restroom. Damn it.

*I went through 3 profane variations on Someone before deciding I was too tired and fed up to be angry.

Crossover

The following is from my secret other blog. Some of it has been censored, because otherwise it wouldn't be fit for this blog, but the main text is still there. It's a feeling I've had on many occasions and I think it's worth posting here.

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"Release"

I see people like Censored. He stopped doing math because it’s was hard and he didn't like it. He went into another curriculum with no real clear major in sight. His career plan is “probably an entrepreneur” when questioned on the shakiness of that platform he simply remarks that “It’s not hard to make money man.”

Part of me wants to hit him. That part isn’t enlightened.

I feel a simultaneous frustration and envy towards people like that. Part of me can’t help but think that they live in a dream world and that reality is going to bitch slap them in 20 years when they realized they’re stuck in a mid level corporate job. They’re bright and young and full or vigor and high hopes. I just wants to crush them. To grind the truth into them, to kill the youthfull innocence and spirit and feast on the blood of thier dead childhood. But the ire is born of envy. Think how beautiful life must be when you think like that. You go out and you drink and you smoke and you don’t worry about the long term repercussions. You take classes that interest you and challenge you in a way that stimulates you rather then classes that challenge your tolerance for bleeding screaming grinding bullshit. You live a life of perfectly balanced ignorance and power. Just enough freedom to enjoy yourself and just enough support to catch you if you fall. It must be nice. But here I am. Aware of the harsh truths and no better off for it. Will it come down to the fact that all I will gain for my misery is right to say “I told you so” when the inevitable mundanity of life entombs us. What have I really gained? We both go to class in order to get credits in order to reach some unknown point of graduation. We both don’t know what we’re really going to go into when we’re forced into total independence. I seem to have gained nothing from my sobriety.

It’s beginning to overwhelm me. I need a reason to be doing this. I need an end in sight. I need something to attain, or aspire to. I need a future which is more then simply ephemeral possibility. I need an enemy I can face clearly and directly in the field of battle. That one of us shall destroy the other and that the result shall be a binary death toll. Even if I was the one who died I would be satisfied because I would have completed what it is that I was meant to do. I need to know what I was meant to do. I need to be meant to do something. I need to understand the intangible whisperings of the divine that exist all around me. I need something. I need purpose.

And all of my ranting and screaming gets me nowhere. After all that I have done this day, a being erupting in some form of dark orgasm through which the heights of masochistic pleasure are achieved by releasing the bitter angst and futile rage from one’s very soul I have gained nothing. I’m just tired.
------------------------------------------

And I am. More and more I realize that some part of me is tired of all this. It dosn't want to strive and delve any more. It just wants to lie down and stop. Part of me wishes I still considered suicide an option, and I know that phrase is going to scare the hell out of my parents, but don't worry. I realized long ago that if I had problems and killed myself I'd just be a dead guy with problems, it isn't really a solution. It would probably also null any hope I once had of fixing said problems as well. Isn't it Ironic? There are so many out there who see the harsh truth and kill themself, but I'm not even afforded that luxery. The ultimate final outlet for so many like me is known by me to be just another illusion. My wisdom will be the death of me. Heh, no it won't, I just went over that remember? I really wish that his minor amusement offered me any kind of relief from my angst.

I am Wobbly Headed Bob*.

And don't get me wrong either. I'm not seeking some outside source to hand me a purpose in life. I know that it has to come from within, but the only thing within me now is a scared confused child and a tired old man who'se fed up with the world. One can't do anything and the other isn't willing to.

"Oh but Max, reach for your dreams!" Shut up. Shut the God damn hell up you hippy bastard. It's a hard harsh truth that we aren't all given the tools we need to achive our dreams. I'd love to be a world renown artist, but I don't have the talent. I may have the potential to be master scientist, but I dont' have the motivation. And Besides, all of the things that I've always wanted in life, the things that you could call life dreams to use such a cliched phrase, are things that can not be found in the material world. They're the delusions and day dreams of an ignorant child who dosn't have the strength to grow up.

And that may be my problem in a nut shell. This world isn't enough. I'll never be satisfied with mundane reality as long as I have the vastly superior world of my own dreamings. Perhaps some day I'll sink fully into my own mind, and the madness will wash over me fully. I think I would enjoy that.

*yes yes, you don't understand what that means. I don't care right now, google it.