I have not learned anything of value since May 5th, 2004, which was the approximate due date for the last of my undergrad assignments. I've worked one job for five months, tackled a two month internship prior to that, and do not feel I have learned anything memorable, anything that's made me feel more intelligent, or anything that's given me a sense of purpose. 8 months is a long time to feel mentally stagnant. During that time I've read books to try and feel stimulated... but without a general undercurrent of learning in my life I feel I've gotten far less from the experiences than usual.

Tomorrow is my last day at the mindless job which has taken away any semblance of intelligence that I thought I once had. Monday starts a new job, with new people, doing new things. There are responsibilities. Things that need to be learned. And while I'm still not 100% sure it's what I want to be working at for my entire life... the idea that I will be learning anything at all at this point is very, very welcome. I miss feeling passionate about life when I wake up in the morning. I miss living and breathing to learn and care about everything around me instead of keeping my gaze firmly set on my shoelaces while I meander around from point(less) A to point(less) B.

So far, being an "adult", at least in the sense that I'm through with college level learning, has been incredibly disappointing and sad. I'm hoping that this Monday is not another step in that same awful direction. *

Two quick other random things...

Firstly, I just received spam, in the form of a text message, sent to my cell
phone. "For a chance to win a free spring break trip..." Are you kidding me? What's next? "Feeling inadequate as a male? Dial 69 Send to find out about our wang enlargement pills.."

Secondly, did I really hear Wes Anderson in an ad for Guitar Center this morning? [terrible rap/metal being blared in the background] "Hi, I'm Wes Anderson. For a chance to win a Gibson guitar, autographed by me, stop by your nearest Guitar Center... and don't forget to see my newest movie, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, playing in theaters now." Has this world truly gone mad? --

PC Update: still not fixed. Not that anyone cares but me. (incircles... in 2005 celebrating six straight years of rambling about PC problems that nobody cares about). That's right, I've been doing this since '99.*

What records are people anticipating this new year? The only thing that comes to mind is the new Crooked Fingers, which just so happens to come out one day prior to my birthday. I predict that this will be the year that I further fall out of step with rock music and descend further into the depths of 'aging rock guy that liked all of those bands that played guitars in the Mid-90's'.*

My 24th birthday. The number 24 seems staggering to me. Like at one point in the past someone would've asked me about being 24 and I would've been able to equate it with a time in which cars would be flying, space travel standard, and robot maids being sold in the same department store aisles as common appliances (talking ones, of course). My parents were married and owned a home by the age of 24. This petrifies me. How in the world were people of that generation able to do that at 24? Isn't marriage complicated? What does this say about our generation... are we lazy? Are we smarter? I can count on one hand (two fingers) the guys that I'm friends with that are engaged.. and well, they're both lunatics. So hopefully it means that we're smarter.. or more patient.. and if that's so I guess I can understand why everyone was smoking pot in the 60's... how in the world can you all have been dumber than us? *

Amazing IT guy from work says that my hard drive is tip-top. Bootable, readable, and very secure and stable. I'm clueless... could it be as simple as a bad ribon or power being sent to the drive? I will have to investigate tomorrow on my day off (sorta) from work. *

The "sorta" is because it's a day off to attempt to get my butt back into an IT type role, as I mentioned in a previous post. Wish me luck. (anything at all will help when it comes to my luck) *

I've gotten pretty far into the songwriting process with a batch of songs that I'm really, really excited about. I've recruited two individuals to help me make it happen for real. I'm so obsessed with the progress of the tunes that my desk at work is littered with all kinds of insane notes to myself that pop into my head throughout the day.. "chorus needs to be Bb minor, G, A for two measures!... strummed like that Sicko song off of Chef Boy RU Dum" and "structure = 1X just guitar, 1X with bass and symbol crashes 2x all together, 4x with vocals before kicking into bridge to chorus." Yes, this is all jibber jabber.. but for the past few years I've written a four chord progression and passed it off as a "song". As in, "dude, i've got songs" or "hey babe, i've written dozens of songs". I've just recently really started finishing things the right way and I couldn't be more excited about it. I'm really ready to put my money where my mouth is this time. --

For better or worse... (i'm of the opinion that it leads towards worse) I haven't played videogames all that often lately. However, I have odd memories of experiencing the same sort of feelings that are addressed in this article from back when I did. The most severe case I had was when I was obsessed with creating my own world maps for Duke Nukem 3D. I remember looking around classrooms and my home intently to figure out which vents might be good for secret passageways and whether walls were "real" or "false". I even got so obsessed with looking around my own home that I spent about a month creating a level that was pretty much a replica of my house. Except for the secret passages, false walls, and dozens of dancing cheerleaders that were hidden in my ceiling.

The same goes for when I was rehauling BorisFX.com this time last year.. I was knee deep in Photoshop 7.0 for 10 hours a day and I'd get into bed and start thinking about using filters to change the texture of my ceiling and dying to make it 75% transparent using the layer menu.

I very much need to get into a technology-heavy type job again. I feel like a part of me is missing without it these days. --

Just wanted to thank everyone for the hard drive fixing tips. I've asked the amazing IT guy that covers my floor at work to take a look at my drive and he's going to take a stab at it later this week. At this point I just really want to save the things that are irreplaceable... digital camera photos, projects / papers that I wrote in college. Although 99% of my time is spent listening to music on my computer... losing an MP3 is nothing like losing that amazing digital camera photo I took of my roommates three years ago, etc. etc. Although it's not quite the same situation, when the fire in my apartment had just been put down by firefighters two summers ago and I was told "kid, you've got a about twenty minutes to get the hell in there and grab whatever means something to you"... surpisingly the things I grabbed first were probably worth the least. Aside from my guitars, there was really nothing of any monetary value that I grabbed that first load. Just pictures, important documents... sentimental things. It was warming to have made the right choice so obviously... it was very natural.

I feel kind of silly for not backing the things up that were on my hard drive, when I easily could have duped them onto my 80-gig slave at any point during the past few months, but with any luck I'll end up relatively unscathed just like I did two summer ago on Mission Hill.

It's been wonderful to see posts here that are not my own. *

Today I came home, turned on my PC, only to be greeted with an error message indicating that my two month old 250 gig hard drive had no intentions of booting. I tried a bazillion different things.. and no matter what I did could not find any data on it at all. That's every paper I've written since high school... over 5,000 mp3's, some of which (even in the age of file sharing) will be nearly impossible to replace, and digital photos going back 7 years. None of it was backed up and the thought of losing all of this stuff is seriously choking up. Yes, that's right... a whole bunch of fucking ones and zeroes is almost making me cry. Cheers to two lame cliches of my generation coming together in perfect unison... technology and melancholy.

So, Miss TFL, if you want me to hook you up with some happy pop tunes, keep your fingers crossed that the ace I.T. team I plan to employ on this case can get back those three-chord ditties comprised of ones and zeroes.

For now I'm booting to my older hard drive, which I've been using as a slave.. which for some reason is still bootable to Windows ME. *

The Copyrights, We Didn't Come Here To Die. Find it and listen to it now. Danny Vapid's brother on vocals. Grade A stuff. I also secured myself a copy of the long out of print LP Groovin' Hard by The Crash for $7. Aside from those ones and zeroes, it's been a pretty good week.

oy!

--------------5:46 PM 1/5/2005----------

im listening to bill hicks (amongst other things) today whilst contemplating life. salman just dropped another biscuit on my head, and i researched said biscuit, as i hope to be more inclined to do when biscuits come dropping.

someone went to canada recently, i dont know who this guy is, but he has a funny tale.

seems like everyone is getting sick, whether it be UTI's or the flu or both, time for immuno-shields or something. on an impulse i purchased some astro glide today, large 5 oz bottle. dont know what im gonna do with it but i know i need to own it. cost cutters has been having some weird sale on hockey cards, so i bought 4 boxes. now i have 4 boxes of hockey cards that are worthless. i spent ~100 dollars on these things. its kinda weird to spend money too, especially when you dont have any. definitely a form of coping with depression. i want my goddamn hockey back.

i have so many plans just waiting to take off, but im missing the ingredient one needs for off taking. oh yeah, motivation

pictures from the fray:
boozefire
drunknbusty
goodtimes
gulliver
joshdeadly
pookdome
vistajosh

i have nothing to do except take pictures and crop them with the gimp

ive been reading this book called ground beneath her feet, its really good and i like it. salman rushdie is a wizard. so far its all earthquakes at tequila distilleries and viscous prattling on greek and indian myth. but yeah, its good.

ive been playing a little bit of a game called uru, and its really successful at making me feel ignorant. i also play with my ipod alot, but hate the fact that i cant make an eq preset and have that preset save to my pod.

Today's iPod playlist (thus far):

Dirt Bike Annie - Show Us Your Demons
The Ergs! - Ben Kweller SP
Go Sailor - s-t (discography)
Sicko - A Brief History Of Sicko

Even with new "hip" and unlistened to tunes like the two new Bright Eyes
albums and the (i'm told) awesome Madvillain LP sitting within the caverns
of my massive 40-gig friend, I can't seem to stop listening to tasty bits
of pop-punk fun. The first two were new to me, and very enjoyable (although
I prefer the Ergs! full length) and the bottom two were loved gems that I
haven't listened to in way too long. I think there are two reasons for my
recent pop-punk revival: #1, I'm miserable and hate not being a student
anymore and am desperately searching for happy pop ditties that remind me
of being younger or #2, as I mentioned in my previous post.. all of the
songs I've been writing lately are very much in this vein. Regardless of
the reason.. something about constantly listening to and playing the type
of songs that I spent so many years of my life really enjoying has been
bringing a smile to my face even during the times when I might not have had
a lot to smile about. *

As Promised, my favorite ten albums of 2004 (or something, i guess):

* Ergs! - Dorkrockcorkrod
* Challenger - Give People What They Want in Lethal Doses
* Death From Above 1979 - You're A Woman, I'm a Machine
* Hot Snakes - Audit in Progress
* Thermals - Phuckin' A
* Methadones - Not Economically Viable
* Arcade Fire - Funeral
* Les Savy Fav - Inches
* Iron & Wine - Our Endless Numbered Days
* Detachment Kit - ... Of This Blood

.. honorable mentions to Interpol, Prefuse 73, and Dizee Rascal. *

I'm craving video games again. I need a good RPG to zap up all of my free time
and remind me why I stopped playing them in the first place. Tales Of
Symphonia perhaps?

It's fitting that I end 2004 sick for 10 days straight.

Thinking back, 2004 kinda sucked.

I hope everyone enjoys their new year's.

I'll hit you with my 10 favorite songs and albums of the year soon.

Here's to 2005.

I hope everybody had a wonderul Christmas.  Despite being plagued with the

flu and a few (expected) insane family outbursts it was an enjoyable time

for me.  I ate well and my various Santa Claus' were very good to me. I

also watched Napoleon Dynamite twice (once while drunk) and found it very

much ot my liking.  It was just... nice.  *



The internet is always lousy the week after Christmas.  Every website goes

on vacation.  My workload this week is insanely small and without the likes

of penny arcade, gamespot, etc. digitally enlightening me it's a struggle

to keep my eyes open.  I also left my iPod at a friends house in a hungover

fog last week.  I can typically use my little white earbuds of joy as a way

of stating things along this lines of, "i'm not interested in hearing what

you got your cat for christmas"... but now I'm defenseless and vulnerable.

And still carrying a little bit o' that flu around.



I'd like to thank Paul for updating lately.  I like pictures.  If I had a

digital camera I would take some, too. *



I'm really writing songs again.  Really.  And they sound like 1996 or so.

1996 was a good year.  I got all A's, made the basketball team, and bought

my first guitar.  I'm hoping that these songs will end up being good as

well. *



Cheers.

more pictures for your fancy:
antdawg
hatefu
ilovepeteee
newscarf
nicepants
ohholygod
petesbath
puckolator
puckxmas
tree
vanity2

im sitting here watching punch drunk love thinking to myself this movie is so awesome. im also thinking i should explain the new photos but why. then i also realized i cant remember the books i just read, so ill start with what i recall.

ignorance
this little gem is pretty much all about sex. i liked it thoroughly. as far as i know its about people in exile having some sort of extramarrital affairs. there are some quotes in there about music that id like to put in here but i cant really get them in the dark while trying to be quiet. i will tell you this, its hard being quiet when you can type 90 wpm (86 net).

blood meridian
this little doozer is pretty much all about sex. i liked it through and through. it starts out with a young boy and ends with a kiddy toucher confessing about touching said same boy. but the book really isnt about the shit i said. its about westward expansion in mid 1800's and killing savage indians. this guy was the dude who wrote all the pretty horses, which i thought might have been some sort of gaylord thing. if its anything like this book i bet its nasty cause this thing is so fuckin violent and just straight up good its almost criminal, itll bite your face off. matter of fact its where i got the quote from one of my more recent posts, man loving games and all.

perdido
this book sucks. something happened from when i was reading this book, to when i finished it, to now, that just left me with a bad taste. all enthusiasm initially, now i wish i hadnt read it. alright maybe not, but maybe so i dont really know.

another roadside attraction
i read this a long time ago. tom robbins will always entertain. i know i had intended to write this post with certain books i had read from x to y in mind. this book is outside that realm but certain books that were inside are gone and forgotten. its about a kidnapped jesus corpse ending up in washington state and mushrooms, edible, poisonous, decorative. robbins characters are always sharp. yuh heard

so i saw life aquatic. good stuff. its getting panned at rotten tomatoes which i kind of predicted. watching it i knew it wouldnt be liked. odd, cause i liked the hell out of it. im also so fucking eager to see this movie, ive been eager, and its just unthirsted. someone watch it and tell me its good. the video store i freq. always has it, staring at me, and it just stopped being in. (for good). toys

pictures:
nightsky
muddywater
rockpit
hazywayne
vanity
metal
naughtyme
techno
ptincoming
origamichess

www.armygame.com. *

My kitty just jumped into the blinds.. but the lights were out (it was less dangerous) and I didn't see her. I assumed that it was a burglar. I grabbed an empty wine bottle from the floor and prepared to smash it in the face of my intruder. There was no intruder. Just a damp, wet, slightly warmer than normal December night that I viewed through the sliding glass doors that are the lame entrance to my pseudo-apartment. The bare (bear?) trees looked wonderful. I forgot to notice them changing to orange and vaguely remember them being green. I haven't been very much alive lately. I haven't noticed much. *

I ordered the supercult video. That shit is so '01. But Mary Anne from Vegas is full of shit... and I used to hang out with her and her goddamn North Shore Mass. accent doesn't sound like Vegay to me (baby). She used to go see lame bands like The Get Up Kids and Juliana Theory. I went too... because I thought she was hot. I was 18 and stupid. Aberdeen City, friends since the age of 6 or so are on the soundtrack. Too many personal connections to not order this pornography. Full report later. *

Four hours isn't sleep at all. --

"Men are born for games...

...Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all.
Suppose two men at cards with nothing to wager save their lives. Who has not heard such a tale? A turn of the card. The whole universe for such a player has labored clanking to this moment which will tell if he is to die at that man's hand or that man at his. What more certain validation of a man's worth could there be? This enhancement of the game to its ultimate state admits no argument concerning the notion of fate. The selection of one man over another is a preference absolute and irrevocable and it is a dull man indeed who could reckon so profound a decision without agency or significance either one. In such games as have for their stake the annihilation of the defeated the decisions are quite clear. This man holding this particular arrangement of cards in his hand thereby removed from existence. This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one's will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god...."

A few months ago my mom decided to try to treat herself on her birthday to a pair of tickets to see Saturday Night Live. She was lucky enough to actually get a pair of seats on her actual birthday, which is pretty snazzy. Probably not blogworthy except for the fact that the musical guest was Modest Mouse. Hearing your mom come home and say "Wow, that Mouse band was pretty good. Your aunt and I really like them. Have you ever heard them? Were those pretty girls playing the Moraccas in the band?" So after six years of Mouse adoration, my mom gets to see them live before me. I actually considered suicide for a few minutes when this all occured because I'd temporarily lost all faith in the universe to function in a logical manner. I snapped out of it, however, when I rememberd that I've never really had all that much faith anyway. *

On the suggestion of one time blogger Paul and the likes of Penny Arcade and all of the other loonies I know personally or digitally I picked up Katamari Damacy for the Playstation 2. The game is just straight up fucked up. Read the synopsis on Gamerankings I linked above. If you see it, buy it... it's only $20 and hard to find, I'm told. *

I've made the decision, for all of the right reasons, to keep my short-term post-graduate life right here in Wayne, NJ. My plans for grandoise far-away cities and such have been negated by the fact that there's no better place than this part of the country to begin a career... and the fact that living at home for a bit will allow me to choose a job I want based on how much I like it rather than its short term earnings potential. Besides, I've already lived in some of those other places and have found that once the luster wears off, it's still the same ole BS. So let's hit up the diner on our way down to the shore after a night of clubbing in the city because I'm a bona-fide Jersey-ite again: Disco fries. Well done with gravy on the side please. *

There's also music on the horizon again. This much I can confirm. And no, this time I'm not going to fuck it up. --

6:16AM and the count is currently 254 to 252 but just about everyone is reporting a Bush victory. Kerry's people are adament and dispatching lawyers as expected, but it's not like last time and hopefully won't take as long as last time to be decided.

The last thing I heard before going to sleep last night was that 17% of of voting population were between the ages of 18-29, the much hyped youth vote. Guess what that percentage was in 2000? Yup, 17%. No one seemed to think that the increased in youth vote would be offset by an increased in stubborn conservative grandma's that haven't votes since 1984.

So it holds true. My generation knows how to whine and make a lot of noise. But when push comes to shove are ultimately lazy and dissapointing.

Weak.

Greetings. I hope everyone took a few minutes out of their day to go and vote today. My candidate won my state, which was one those pesky battle ground states... so it feels good to have participated for the first time. Now I just have to hope that the rest of the country follow suit. *

I was finally settling in to my job here in New York. Just about ready to start looking for apartments in Manhattan and begin this supposedly wonderful post-graduate life I've been waiting for my whole life. No more than 48 hours before I had solidified my desire to become a Manhattanite did I find out that my job had been outsourced to Paris and that if I wanted to keep it, I'd have to move there. Thing is, I don't know French. And Paris is expensive. And they eat fucking snails. And... well, shit... I didn't want to move to fucking Paris. While I can still remain employed at my current job well into the new year, the fact that it was a ticking time bomb has sorta soured my current mental state. The positive of not having to give a good goddamn about my work performance doesn't offset the prospect of unemployment quite as much as Office Space or Fight Club might have you believe. Dreading the process of Monster.com and the goddamn Sunday New York Times I decided to hit up all of my former employers and see what they had brewing in the pipeline. Fortunately, one of them turned up a very good opoortunity. However, that opportunity just happens to be in Atlanta. Now don't get me wrong... I love Atlanta. I loved living there for six months and I know I'd enjoy living there for a longer period. I guess I'm just kinda torn about the fact that for the first time in my life I don't feel like leaving my friends. Or my family. Or my girlfriend. I've done that a million times before and everytime it's been a crazy adventure. Unfortunately, where I sit right now I'm just not in the mood for an adventure. And I guess that sorta goes against everything I've done for the past five years... moving to Boston... doing internships in Georgia and Ohio... but I had grown very ok with the fact that I would be living in New York for a few years, close to friends and family and almost indefinitely settling down near the place I grew up. Thrusting myself into uncertainty at this time in my life is a mix between exciting and frightening and I'm not 100% how I feel about it yet...

Jesus... It's just an interview and I'm acting like I have the job already. Excuse my poor blogging, I'm rusty. --

You see, the thing is, blogger is blocked from the PC's at my new(ish) job. I essentially wake up at 5:45am, commute my ass to The Port Authority by bus and don't arrive home until just before 8PM. By that time I'm trying so hard to squeeze all of my little "chores" into the course of a few hours just to hit a reasonable bed time. Blogging takes a back seat, is what I'm saying.

However, I am definitely not willing to let this little outlet go. It's meant too much to me over the years and I know for a fact that I can make it important to me again. I don't plan on living at home in Jersey and commuting into the city for too much longer. And once I can cut my commute down by a large amount, I'll be back in front of here kicking like back in the day, only a bit more mature-like. Ya dig?

So, until then.. check back every once in awhile. I do plan to try and hit in.circles sporadically until my full scale return. Who knows, maybe Paul will write something, too. Or Jimmy. *

The Sox are creaming the Yanks as I write. Hell has surely frozen over. --

MY SINCEREST APOLOGIES. REALLY. WRITING HERE HAS TAKEN A BACKSEAT TO JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING ELSE IN MY LIFE RIGHT NOW AND IT'S GROWN TO BE A BIT OF A JOKE. HOWEVER, AFTER LOTS OF THINKING, I AM MAKING ONE (NOT QUITE LAST DITCH) EFFORT TO SAVE THIS HERE WEBSITE. WITH ANY LUCK, THERE WILL BE ABOUT THREE UPDATES A WEEK... BRIEF AND ENTERTAINING. SOMETHING I'VE NEVER QUITE SEEN ANYWHERE ELSE AND I'M EXCITED ABOUT IT.

THANKS FOR HANGING WITH ME. GIMME A FEW DAYS AND THINGS'LL BE SWELL. I PROMISE. --

CHRISTOPHER