Leapin' for Leap Year

Well, today was the 29th of Feb., an almost magical day where... nothing different happens.

I spent it like I spend most Fridays: bored at work, spinning around in an office chair, taking calls at fixing problems at ye olde Drake Computer Help Desk (which we're supposed to start called Drake Support Center, but I don't see why. We're supposed to do this to avoid possible confusion with people thinking we're a help anything desk, but if you toss the word "computer" in there, I don't think people will be confused. Support Center sounds like a place you call if you think your friend is going to take their own life or something). Andy and I (Andy being my awesome co-worker, the one that does most of the work) fixed many things, talked about a bunch of stuff, and then I left.

Then I took care of some business on phone lines, as I always do. Whenever people organize, they call me to be middle man. I don't understand why.

Then I took my super-duper awesome girlfriend, Aliona out to get foodstuffs and stuffs and it was great. I mean, we went to TGI Friday's which isn't really the "top of the pops" so to speak (although who would ever describe a place as the "top of the pops" as it is clearly an event that takes place on July 4th...), but it was good and I feel well fed.

Tomorrow starts another month, another 31 days of homework, and another eight posts I get to make for you crazy kids to read! So strap in and hold on tight because...

...well, I don't know why.

ANOTHER POST

My Writers and Critics event went OK, I thought. My story ended up being more complex than I'd hoped it would be and, as a result, ended up being kinda like a rough draft instead of a finished story, but that's OK for the most part, I think, because now I have something I can work on a bit more in depth in the future.

Tim Bascom, the guy that people actually came to see, read from his book and it was also very good. His story is about his life growing up in Ethiopia, so I wrote about my travel experiences as a way to kinda work with his text, rather than against it. Which is what I would have done if I'd read anything else I've put together in the past six months.

Otherwise, everything else is going OK. I'm finally getting back on track with some stuff I've been letting slide and that's good, since we aren't at midterms yet, this means I can kinda pick up some slack (I hope!). Otherwise, not much else has been going on.

In other news, though, I have done this thing on Facebook which I think is awesome. Basically I've created a group that has only one purpose: To make fake albums.

The Facebook group's URL is as follows:
http://drake.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10182729001
All you have to do is follow the directions and stuff and you can make your own fake albums! Join up and make some junk! No one cares how quality your picture ends up being, either. We all just like to look at them!

Cheers!

I Forgot:

-Help Deskin' @ 8AM
I apparently decided, in the past, that it was a good idea to volunteer to work a full day from 8AM-4:30PM. I found this out, again, way too late to really take care of it in a smart manner. So now I'm sitting here, exhausted out of my mind, and wishing I could go back in time and punch myself in the stomach for signing up for this, then making that version do the work of convincing a different self from even further in the past to not sign up for work and to stop using so many italics in the future. Obviously, based on the nearly obnoxious levels of italics found, this didn't happen.
But I'm getting out of work at 3:30, an hour early. Because I'm tired. As Hell.

-Writin' for a Readin'
I have been working on the thing I'm going to read for the Writer's and Critics event I'm guest reading at, but only in my head. I have nothing on paper, yet.
The worst part is, I'm limited to ten minutes of read time, and the thing I'm working on in my head is LONG AND HUGE and, well... this will only cause problems.

-Eatin'
Since I've gotten better - after my battle with bronchitis - I've found that my appetite has ever-so-slowly started to reemerge. But, because I'm already used to eating rarely and very little, I find myself starving all the time and never around foodstuffs.
Learning to remedy this is taking more time than it should.

-Blackboard
I just found out that most of the important stuff - like the assignments - for my Witchcraft class are posted on Blackboard and not on the class syllabus or announced in class. This is after a week of having figured I'd just missed the information every class and showing up unprepared in every possible fashion for two classes in a row.
Now that I know, I'm going to actually start doing readings for that class. Its amazing how knowing what the readings are can help you do the readings.

Should be Writing

That Writer's and Critic's event that I'm doing a pre-reading at is in less than a week. Actually, I'll be done with it in exactly one week from right now. And I haven't even started really putting words to Word, yet. Which is bad. Really bad.

But the problem is, I don't usually feel compelled to write until the last minute. Or if there is no challenge I can see. And usually being "down-to-the-wire" is enough of a challenge for me to produce something. It works for every Writer's Night Drake has had that I've desired to go to. I've only once read something I'd produced way before. Otherwise, I'm usually late because I just finished whatever it is I am going to read and the printer ran out of paper halfway through printing it.

In this way, I'm a terrible writer.

Some people - I've found out - write ALL THE TIME and are constantly putting something together. Some idea in their head goes onto paper or into a Word document. That's not me. I only produce under extreme challenges or - in rare cases - when an idea is so grand I can't fit it in my head anymore.

A few of these examples include the script my older brother and I put together one week, this short story called 10 Up/Down, a recent story, Dust to Dust, and then a few other, random things. Like this book I wrote this one time. Yeah, it wasn't very good.

Otherwise, I can't finish anything. I started writing this book over the past summer, but I ran into what I call my "anti-muse" and have not been able to produce a single page really since. I put together a few scraps over Christmas break, but nothing worth - heh - "writing" home about. Aside from that, there are about half a billion "false starts" on my hard drive that will never ever get any farther than that.

And that's sad.

I came to realize over the past few years that I need to constantly create. But this just doesn't happen, anymore. I produce a crummy web comic twice a week, I write here in this blog, and I make stupid pictures and post them on Facebook. But otherwise... I'm not doing even a tenth of the creating I want to do.

I must learn to remedy this.



Please tell me how to remedy this.

Being a "Special Guest" (also: Some Yoga Stuff)

So on the 26th the Writer's and Critic's series is having a special guest reader, Tim Bascom, come over from Simpson to read from his book and, as of late, the English dept. has been having guest readers give a reading of their materials before the main show. These secondary special guests have been English students. This time, for Tim, the secondary student guest is SKYLER BARTELS.

That's right. So come one, come all, and see your least favorite classmate, peer, friend, or whatever give a reading about London or something, I don't know. I've barely started writing the thing which - I am aware - is a bad thing. I should probably get on it pretty quickly, here. So I probably will.

Also, as I stated in an earlier post, I've started doing yoga stuff. I was asked by Aliona to go and I said "sure" for once and so I've been going. It's been kind of off-and-on since I had bronchitis and didn't really feel like going for, like, a week or so. But otherwise I'm learing new things about my body! Like... for example... the ways it won't move and the ways it will move. Turns out, there are far more ways it won't move than I'd previously figured. Huh.

Otherwise, I'm supposed to be typing up a paper tonight and I'm also supposed to be going to bed pretty quickly. But I'm doing neither of these things, it seems. Instead, here I am, blogging on this thing. Which I've done rather frequently as of late, even though I said I was probably going to quit.

I guess I just don't know how to quit you!

Oh, That Ice

The first time I noticed the ice in my gut, it was when my younger brother came up the stairs to interrupt my video game playing to inform me that my sister, Sarah, may have passed away. A huge chunk of ice, sharp and cold and dense, grew within an instant. It was uncomfortable, it was weighty, and it was all things wrong.

This block of ice, chuck of ice... whatever, has invaded my gut time and time again. It always manages to vanish, always dissolves back into nothingness. But every one and again, it shows up like a bad habbit or an annoying mosquito when you're trying to sleep and its dark and you can't see it to swat and kill it, but its there. Oh, God in Heaven, is it ever there.

Sometimes I know why it shows up. Specific events have caused it to surface. Over the summer, some student loans people kept trying to talk to me and I figured it was something horrible, maybe that they weren't going to give me any more loans and I'd be out on my butt in the streets rather than out on my butt at Drake. But they wanted to update my address for shipping and letter purposes, nothing more. The ice was there, however, letting me know it was ready to make me wish I was dead.

Other times I don't know why the ice is there. It simply is. It shows up, most times, like this... and usually signals something huge or major that is going on, either behind the scenes - literally - or just in my subconcious. Something huge or major, but most definately bad.

Today I have that ice. And I'm trying to determine what it is there for, this time. If I can figure it out, I can usually get rid of it pretty quick like and move on with my life again. But sometimes I simply can't. Every once in a great while, I never solve it. And either the major or huge thing takes place and I feel completely blindsided, or nothing ever seems to happen and I just move on (but something probably did happen and I was just naive to notice it).

I hope its nothing. Maybe its always been nothing.

I don't know.

I don't want to grow up.

Bronchitis is _________

(Hint: the answer is "Stinky")
_______________________


So, yeah, I figure you've got this gathered and what have you already, but I've been suffering from bronchitis for the past - nearly - week. Really started to hit pretty hard last Thursday where I was found wandering around almost aimlessly at the All-Majors career fair (which should have been called All-BUSINESS-Majors career fair...). My girlfriend tells me I looked dazed. Aliona also tells me I look way better today.

Which is good, because I feel way better, now, than I did a few days ago. Friday, when I went in to see a dr., I felt like death. Seriously. Like death. I just wanted to lie in bed and cry. But I didn't. Because I'm a man. I whimpered like a pro!

I had to miss some classes yesterday because I was still running a 102ish temp, but today I was right around average temperatures, so I went to classes and everything was fine (for the most part). Then I did some homework, made some stupid pictures with MSPaint, hung out with the girlfriend some (where she told me I looked way better), and then came back to do more homework!

Oh boy!

Nothing like getting over being sick to remind you of how much you hate homework.

Tomorrow: BUILD-A-BEAR THING!

PS: Also, I started doing Yoga. I'll fill you all in.

AMC

When did AMC, a movie channel that is supposed to be dedicated to broadcasting American Movie Classics begins showing junk?Today I was flipping through and caught a shot of Lara Craft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life.

This is not a CLASSIC. This is a recent movie that did "OK" at the box office but in all truth failed to really bring about any change in people. Isn't that why we consider movies to be classic? I think of classics and I instantly think of Casablanca.


This is a movie that will always be remembered, throughout all of time. Love it or hate it, no one can deny that it is a classic in every sense of the word. It is a powerful and wonderful film that more people should see. This is the kind of movie that should be on AMC. Not Tomb Raider. What the hell?

In twenty years if people were asked to list movies they regarded as "classics" I can bet you more people will have Casablanca or Citizen Kane in their top 5-10. No one will have Tomb Raider on that list.

Tomb Raider isn't even so bad that it can be considered a classic in regards to its poor quality. Its a well made movie, for what its worth. Is there a great plot? No, but its OK. The effects any good? Sure. Acting? Passable. Concept and overall followthrough? Fine.

A movie like Snakes on a Plane will be considered a classic, I feel, but not because its a "great movie" or anything like that. Simply because of the cultural impact it had on a nation so devoted to it (mostly online). People knew it wasn't going to be a fantastic example of cinema art, but thats not why they went to see it. And thats not why it will be considered a classic. It was so bad that it was exactly what everyone expected it to be. And it never had any higher goals. It ended up right where it wanted to end up.

Tomb Raider is just worthless and a throw-away film. Really, the only moment I remember (aside from the split second I watched just a bit ago) is Lara Croft punching a shark in the face. As cool as it was, even when I saw it the first time (I think flying to China? London? I don't remember...) I thought it was stupid as hell.



AMC has been showing terrible movies in an attempt, I think, to boost ratings. But this is what happened to MTV and VH1 that made them so terrible. They needed to do other things than show music videos and, as such, ended up having stupid reality shows and game shows and now, for the most part, barely have anything to do with music and/or music videos.

AMC, stop doing what you're doing and show classics. Thats what you were born to do, and so few of us know what we're on this Earth to do. Use your gift for good.

Not for stupidity and ratings.