Diary11/08/1999 Today's big issue: ladeda. Gee another school day where nothing interesting happened. I'm beginning to see a pattern. At least I have the Method of Groove show to look forward to on friday, assuming that Ariel can go and such. I really don't feel like going to shows alone. Otherwise in my life, today has been blah. I'm going to have to stop spending money now. I bought my new printer, and since I'm probably going to have to buy books next semester, I'm pretty close to my self-imposed spending limit. Hopefully I'll work during the xmas break, but that really won't be a lot of money. But I did have to buy the new Kincaid. album since I love them so much and since i was ordering from Pal anyway... arg. I kept it under $50 dollars though. I always say that I'm going to buy some music and that will hold me over for a while, but that never happens. I guess this is how crack addicts feel. Hee... addicted to indie pop, how sad. Haiku of the day: this is so silly i need me some benjaminz dolla dolla bill 11/06/1999(and a little bit of Sunday) Today's big issue: yay! I had fun yesterday! woohoo! not really that much happened, i just went over to ariel's and watched the blair with project with her and her friend harry. The movie isn't all that freaky the second time, but it's still pretty fun. i still don't know what that bit of gore wrapped in the flannel and sticks is, though... anyone know? well anyway we watched that and sat on the couch and talked for a little while and then everyone was tired so i went home and went to bed. Then this morning i did the usual go to breakfast with my dad and my brother thing that we always do on sundays. (bryan: if you get coffee you have to be sure to tell them you don't want any cream. me: well i think i'm just going to have orange juice. with no cream.)(it was funnier then). Haiku of the day: I love the weekend but the rest of the week sucks it's just five days though 11/05/1999 Today's big issue: dot dot dot Today was a kind of in-between day. Nothing really happened, but i'm hoping that some cool things are going to happen soon. Or something. Anyway one silly thing that happened was in chemistry class NONE of my lab partners were there, so i had to go at the lab alone, which sucked since i didn't have enough time to really finish. There was this part at the end where we were supposed to carefully and methodically make a system to determine what was in a little vial. Instead of doing things that way, I just basically threw a whole bunch of chemicals together and wrote down as much data as I could and left just in time to get over to my calc test that I had right after lab. At least nothing exploded... At least i'm home now. ariel was busy tonight so i didn't really do anything, but maybe tomorrow... right now i'm just sitting on my bed and pondering whether or not to get a new printer since my old one just barely works... I'm going to write some new reviews soon... I've been sorta putting that (as well as anything else I enjoy) off this week do to everything just being hectic. ah well. Haiku of the day: It's the weekend now hopefully i'll do something but nothing works too 11/04/1999 Today's big issue: it's almost over... One more day and this horrid week is over! Woohoo! I have a calc test tomorrow, and I had a physics test today. I think I did pretty well on the physics one and I should do the same on the Calc one unless I find some way to mess up on easy stuff like I did on the last one. And I kicked major ass on the chem test I had on monday: 100%! Rad. The problem is that i'm still not quite so sure if i'm going to pass because I've gotten zeros on some labs. Oh well. I'll be fine. As for the things that I actually wanted to do today (in what little time there was for me to do them since I have three (!!!!) chem labs due tomorrow), I went to the mac user group meeting and played some violent games for a little while. I've come to the realization that violent games really aren't that much fun. Give me a little cartoon character who solves puzzles and I'm happy, have me run through hallways with lots of armed people trying to kill me and I have flashbacks to highschool... I'm hoping to come home this weekend. I haven't gotten into touch with Ariel to see if she wants to do anything and I'm not sure if my mom can come get me since she has some sort of weird illness that has been making dizzy. But I'll figure something out. I need to get out of this place fairly frequently. I guess it's not so good that I keep running home on the weekends, but I'm really too shy to make lots of friends here so it's not like I have anything to stick around for. It's either sit in my dorm room or go back to schenectady and try to pull something together. I guess I might make some friends here sometime, but I don't do that quickly. I'm slow at making friends. Most of my friends i've known forever so I really don't quite know how to make new ones, except by meeting old friends of my old friends. and I guess there just aren't that many vegan mac using indie listening physics and philosophy studying dorks out there for me to hang out with. And I don't want to get into that thing where I just hang out with a group of people who aren't like me at all and I have to change to fit in becuase I think I'm fairly happy with who I am as a person and I don't want to go back home and realize that the me I knew a few months ago would be sickened at the sight of the me I see now. I want to somehow improve and not regress for the sake of not being lonely. I'm good at being lonely, even if I'd prefer not to be. On another note, I found that my copy of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless got scratched! I'm inconsolable. And winter is fast approaching here... it was cold today. But that's good. I like cold. I can't wait for it to snow. I don't know why the thought of snow appeals to me so much, but it just gives me a cozy feeling. I know that sometimes it's not so good if I have to walk through ice or drive in it, but even slipping and falling down, or the clumsy proccess of trying to avoid it, seems like a good time. Maybe it's just because of memories, but I want some snow storms. Haiku of the day: it's getting cold out now i can't wait for winter Bring on the blizzards 11/02/1999 I sha'n't bore you with the details. Haiku of the day: Rainy day again and this time it went sideways I thought it was snow 11/01/1999 Today's big issue: Oh, what a dull day Work work work finish...pause...what now? I actually ran out of things to do today. I ended up in front of my computer for most of it, but not even using it. I just kinda sat here and listened to records all day. How exciting. I found out that my camera canwithstand being dropped fifteen feet onto concrete, but I never really wanted to find out. Oh well. At least it still works. I took a chemistry test today, whee. I need a belt. fin. Haiku of the day (i'm not feeling motivated, ok?): what a dull monday most of the time they are tough this one was just slow 10/31/1999 Today's big issue: bored bored bored Why, out of all of the days on this weekend, did today have to be the 25 hour day? I mean friday and saturday kicked ass, but today is just a nothing day. I'm alone in my dorm room (well mostly alone) just sitting here. I don't even want to use my computer, but there's really NOTHING that I could be doing. I'm in troy, I don't really know anyone here, I've pretty much done all of my homework, and I'm unspeakably bored. Like so bored I have a headache from it. It's kinda sad really. I remember when I used to look foreward to Halloween so much, but this time nothing worked out so I'm stuck here. I'm even kinda hoping that some trick-or-treaters come to the dorm even though I don't have any candy just because it would be fun to see some silly costumes... I'd probably give them some tofu products.. heh... what do I care if they throw toilet paper at this place? I don't really like it either. I had some extra time, so instead of the haiku of the day, here's the (cheesy).. Shakespearean Sonnet of the Day: Friday was my epitome of fun but now I'm back and things have turned to shit the other side of me has now begun to steal my joy but I am used to it am I condemned to spend weekdays alone away from all that makes me feel like me but on weekends to have a taste of home a fleeting glimpse of what I want to be am i truly depressed or is this just the fall from what was great to something less it would be dumb to call my life a bust when i'm a step away from happiness today some things may pass be by but I will find my fun in being shy 10/30/1999 Today's big issue: road trip! Today was so much fun! Me and Ariel went to visit Zak down at bard (her parents and her brother dropped us of and then went and got lost in the woods, they got in time though)! It was so cool to be able to see where Zak spends his days now. Bard is cool, if a bit filthy. There are a lot of trailers there since they accepted too many people this year and ran out of room in the dorms and there is mud mud mud everywhere. But a lot of it is nice. They have a spot where you can go down to the "river". I use quotation marks for a purpose: as we got closer, Ariel pointed out that it was not moving, something which you would normally expect a river to do. But it was all muck. Very weird. Another neat thing about Bard is that there is art everywhere. We might have actually seen more art than there actually was since it's kinda hard to tell what is art and what is just stuff that's kinda there. So a few things were just art by default because we couldn't figure out what else they could be. It was silly. There were signs up for a Marine Research show there tonight, too! But I was so sad because I couldn't stay, since I would have had to walk the way back and since it takes about an hour and a half on the thruway, i probably couldn't make it back by monday :) oh well. Hopefully I'll be able to see them some time. here are some of the pictures I took Haiku of the day: This weekend kicked ass why can't they all be like this? oh well, i had fun 10/29/1999 Today's big issue: Squeeeeee! Best.....show....ever.....(falls face first on to keyboard) Haiku of the day: Me and Jeremy I have gone to seven shows and they all kicked ass 10/28/1999 Today's big issue:oy. Something is really wrong with CDnow I think: i got the shipment confirmation for my new Kahimi Karie CD after i got the actual package. How does matter travel faster than electrons? spooky. But I just did three chemistry labs in one night, taking up about 4 hours of reading my chem book and plowing through the questions. So I'm tired now. I think i'm going to go to bed... yeah sleep... Haiku of the day: Lewis structures suck Not because they don't work right I just don't like them 10/27/1999 Today's big issue: well alright! Today was ok. I cooked rice. I got a 143% on a chemistry test (thank ye gods of bonus points). I finished the new reviews. I played computer games. Not much more. Haiku of the day: punk used to be cool but then the frat boys caught on now it's fucking lame 10/26/1999 Today's big issue: lalalalalala Today was a good day, but nothing special. I went to my first meeting of the mac user group on campus just to see what it was like and i liked it. We got stickers. dig. The rest of the day was pretty much just doing homework and going to class. I started writing the reviews for the three CDs that i just got over the weekend, and I'll probably have them up either tomorrow or the day after. I think I'm finally starting to get back into being a human again. When I first got here I had so many periods where I would totally avoid human contact, not through any misanthopic urge but through immense and powerful feelings of inadequacy that lead to a ridiculous amount of shyness. I figured that I wasn't really that entralled with myself so there was no reason to try to force myself on others since I thought it would be so impolite since I wanted nothing more that to be able to get away from myself... but I think I'm over that now. I can talk again. yay! Haiku of the day: green and orange feet i don't even notice them I am a bit odd 10/25/1999 Today's big issue: Road Trip! (hopefully) yeah so me and ariel are planning on visiting zak down at bard somehow, someway. First we thought it would be easy and we could just borrow my mom's car and drive down and drive back and all would be happy so of course that can't happen so my mom needs the car and won't let us borrow it. But we are not the types to let a minor setback like that keep us from our goal, oh no!, we set about looking for alternatives: trains are too expensive and they don't go near bard (well they might go near there but they don't stop there which is just as important) and the bus schedule is too freaky to figure out and my guess is that there is no way to get there from here. So then arial decided to ask her mom if she would be up to the momentus task of driving us there and we got a maybe! woohoo! a maybe is much much much better than a definitely not, so that's where we are now. Other options included waiting a little while and evolving wings, buying a car and then throwing it away when we got back, getting one of those flintstone's type cars, hitchhiking, and building a car out of legos. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Also today i got a free cd in the mail: an EP by John Galt (band, not person). And happily i love it and therefore a review should be up shortly (i now have a self imposed waiting period of at least three days before reviewing anything to avoid writing something that i end up disagreeing with). Not that I think I'll stop liking this, but just so i don't say anything stupid because i haven't had time to absorb the music, ya know? well anyway, i am so happy about this in general: i get a free cd that i like and i get a way of getting new content on my site since i haven't been able to spend much money lately (well except for the Brittle Stars cd, but as i'll say in my review when i write it, it is absolutely necessary for sustaining life, so an exception can be made. or something). and i had tofu hotdogs for the first time today! I even like them more than I remember liking regular hotdogs, and they don't have the unfortunate problem of containing random pig bits. Plus they're orange, which is neat. you don't really get to eat that much orange food. well, except oranges. and oh yeah i had a chemistry test today that i think i did good on, but that's just school. Haiku of the day: road trips are way fun but better when you can drive we'll get there somehow 10/24/1999 Today's big issue: humdehumdehum... I managed to go through the whole day without doing anything important. That's not a good thing, but I guess it's not a bad thing. I did get the new Brittle Stars album in the mail today from Tweekitten! Woohoo! I love it so much and I've only had it for a day. So I'll have a review up sometime this week, along with the Stungun album that I got from the Tweekitten CD Fun Club. That place made my weekend a lot better. Also today, Eric informed me that Dink Smallwood went freeware, so I downloaded that and I've been playing it all day. I love those kinds of games that are all cartoon like and you play a guy who walks around and solves puzzles and gets to be a hero. I hate how they stopped making them like that since the whole 3D thing came around. It's not like Disney stopped doing regular animation after Toy Story came out, so I don't see why this happened... probably some sort of conspiracy by Intel. But this game is nice and not-so-computer hogging, and it runs fine in Virtual PC (whew, I hate it when I can't run cool stuff on my Mac). One silly thing that I did over the weekend was bring back all sorts of vegan food with me, including cereal and soy milk for breakfast, and I remembered a bowl but I forgot to bring a spoon other than a big wooden one for making pasta. So I'll look adequately silly in the morning. As for what I'm looking forward to this week, there is the Me and Jeremy show on friday that I'm way excited about. Well, it's not really a Me and Jeremy show, even though they are playing, it's the cd release party for the Method of Groove. I didn't really like them all that much the last time I saw them, but I didn't dislike them enough not to avoid seeing them again, so I'm even excited about seing them. Plus there are two other bands: Funk Shop Loomis and F-Timmi, and I've never heard of either of them, so i'm exited about that, too since i love seeing bands i've never seen before. And Ariel is going to come with me and maybe Joe if he is around and available. I'm just excited in general. Haiku of the day: I'm back in my dorm but i'm not at home quite yet friday i will be 10/23/1999 Today's big issue: ghost town and i'm one of them Whee a whole day spent in schenectady. Too bad everyone else was away... This town is notable only for the people in it and the ones i like were all out of reach, so i was left with just the people in minivans who like to be mean. oh well. I went food shopping today finally! I'm going to bring buch a whole bunch of tofu and soy based stuff to sicken and confuse the people in my dorm! woohoo! and i bought Mac OS 9 today and installed it and it works great! yay! it fixed some stuff that annoyed me and now i can see japanese text on japanese pages the way it's supposed to look rather than a jumble of weird symbols. Of course i still can't read it but it looks better. Haiku of the day: schenectady died nothing is here but the cold i guess i'm lonely 10/22/1999 Today's big issue: happyfinally Today wasn't bad at all. In fact I had a good day. In fact, a really good day. Nothing great happened, and I didn't get to go see Mike Watt, but I had fun today. And I'm home now and that always helps. And I got a CD in the mail that I wasn't even expecting: the new Twee Kitten CD Fun Club CD! Woohoo! I like it, too. Which means review in a few days (I was running really short on stuff to review... so that's cool). my haiku of the day: my sock has blue spots yeah i spilled the detergent it looks like a cow 10/21/1999 Today's big issue: ho hum Today was not exiting. In fact I would call it boring if that didn't imply that I had nothing to do. I was busy all the time, but nothing really really astonishing happened. The physics lecture today was from a guy who sorta reminded me of a cross bewtween Kojack and the professor guy on Futurama. The quote of the day was when he said "I don't know why they paint telescopes pastel" I just thought it was so funny, but i guess you had to be there. After that, I went to the society of physics students meeting and that was kinda neat. We played with liquid nitrogen and lasers so that's always fun. Now I'm back at my computer. Yippy skippy. I really want to go see Mike Watt tomorrow, but I don't think i will be able to get there. I really need to make friends with people who want to go to shows and have cars... oh well I guess that would require me to not be so shy, but I don't wanna do that. But at least tomorrow is friday! Woohoo all my classes are over by 1 and then I'll try to figure out some way to go home. Probably. I don't really want to stay here but I've been home on the last two weekends so I'm not sure how happy mom is with it. Plus there's not going to be anyone in schenectady. But at least i could get a chance to sleep. Oh well I guess I have to start my chemistry labs now... 10/20/1999 Today's big issue: busybusybusy I hate those days when the only times that i have free are not long enough to do anything worthwhile, so i go in between 15 minute periods of bordom and longer periods of panic - whee! Oh well, at least the panic-ey part of the week is over and now i have my two relatively easy days and then the weekend. I'm hoping to go home and do some food shopping, either with my mom or my dad. Hee I can't live off of the dining halls all of the time anymore. I need to eat things other than french fries for lunch, I think. I wish they would just have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches there, it would make my life so much easeir, but alas, i have to pick through stuff for things that meet my recently tightened requirements for edible. Oh well, I think it's worth it. I sort of have a test in calculus tomorrow, but it's one of those weird tests where basically, if you pass it then, super and you don't have to take it again, or if you don't you can take it over. I think you can even take it a couple of times. Sheesh. Education these days. Also, the essay that I stayed up late writing yesterday, as it turns out, isn't due until monday, so there goes my perfect procrastination record. I sorta wanted to spend a bit more time on it to make it better, so I'm actually kinda happy about it. It also means less work for the weekend - woohoo! The sunset was really cool today. I don't know if it was just because the air is so bad in troy, but it was really red. For like ten minutes, it looked like the world was under a pink light. I tried to take a picture of it, but it didn't turn out very well. I guess the camera does some sort of compensation for when the light is red. or something. i dunno. 10/18/1999 Today's big issue: 16 dollars for a plate of rice and a root beer 5:53pm: RPI is definitely not a vegan school. Background info for those who don't know: there are two dining halls on campus: Sage, the nicer one that i usually go to because it is only for my dorm and another one, and the Commons, which is for everybody. I went to Sage first and paid for dinner, looked around, huh, nothing for me. They usually have a vegetarian meal, but today it had parmesean cheese on top, so there went that. Even the salad bar was inedible, not becaue of vegan concerns, but rather because it was filthy and vile and gross and all of that. So over i go to the Commons, paying again, to find that they were even out of freaking lettuce and the only other thing i could eat was rice. Plain rice. Nasty rice. Crunchy rice. And a rootbeer. Whee. I really need to start cooking. On the other fronts, i had a chemistry exam today, as i do on every monday, and as with every chem test, i have no idea how i did on it. I mean i knew what was being tested, but you can really never tell what they'll decide to take points off for. Bastards, all of them. And it's only monday... 10/17/1999 Today's big issue: vegan? 4:22pm :Well i just read about rennet today and how cheese isn't really vegetarian at all and is in fact along the lines of veal. shit. well i've wanted to try veganism for a while, and since i'm already a vegetatian this shouldn't be TOO hard. Well maybe. I don't know. I'll see how things turn out. Right now I haven't eaten anything since deciding to go vegan, hee so so far so good :). We'll see how things turn out after dinner. I don't even know what I'm going to have. I guess a salad and I'll check around if there is any real vegan stuff that i can actually live on. I think I'll have to go shopping soon. Sheesh. Goodbye ice cream goodbye cheese goodbye even fucking bread. The animals had better appreciate this :) i was thinking that i could live off of cereal and soy milk, but what about the fucking cereal itself... this is going to be hard. well i have to, i can't be a hypocrite. honesty and integrity are way too hard to obtain in a society like ours where the food industry, a fairly important one by the measure of what people need to survive, is so fucking heartless. damnit. 5:20pm: huh. dinner was...interesting. I'm still a vegan, though (well actually i'm not really going to call myself a vegan until i've been at it for at least a week, but that's the most convenient word to use there). but one who is frustrated with what options i have at the dining hall. The only things that i knew i could eat today were rice and salad, so i ate those. The problem was that at the chinese part, where i got the rice, there was some other vegetable thing, but it was various vegetables hanging out in some sort of brown liquid. I'm a bit distrustful of unidentified brown liquids, so i pointed at it asked the guy who was serving it if it was vegan or not. His response was "Veg-a-tah-bul." and *whap* a pile of it was on my plate. At least it was next to the rice and not on top of it. So, a bit discouraged, i went and got a seat and ate, and avoided anything that had been in contact with the strange goo. I left a comment on the comment board asking if they could label stuff as to whether or not it's vegan. I doubt that anything will change, but what else can i do? 5:56pm: So why am i doing this? I guess its important that i be able to justify my beliefs to myself, and i think that's why. I guess. Well anyway, the reason i became a vegetarian in the first place was because i didn't feel that it was right to kill animals for food. In effect, "eating corpses is gross". Fair enough, but what made me feel that it was still alight to exploit them and force them to have pointless lives dedicated only to the production of fluids? I know that one of my main things in human politics was that it is not enough to be living, one must have an actual life of some sort. So if the right to be alive extends to animals, why does the other not? Is it just because it makes it more difficult on me to think about it? What is more important: a glass of milk or being able to philosophically justify my actions to myself? I hope the answer is obvious, but there are strong forces acting within a person that tells him to do things that he knows are wrong, be it murder, wearing nikes or eating meat. I would be stupid to say that these things are easy to overcome. People throw thier lives away on them, and I for one am in totally awful shape and am way overweight because of them. But maybe i can overcome them in this case, when the whole of everything i believe comes in direct conflict with them. Otherwise, what is the point of being alive at all? Shit. It would be so much easier if i was more like the ignorant drunken louts that make up the rest of this school. |