12:30 musings

Well I don't have anything long to say so I'm going to string together as many thoughts as I can in one post.

Today was one of the first days in a couple of weeks that was legitmately beatiful. I loved the soft feeling of the air and the bright sunshine - the temp was (for me) absolutely perfect. I have slowed down my reading consumption because its hard to find books to feed it. I have instead taken up reading comic books. Now I know that lots of people out there will laugh at me and call me "childish, immature, one-who-has-no-life" and I would agree with you. But I realized tonight that I am equally bored with comics and so I'm going to lay off of those for a while. Tomorrow I think I will have to finally give my room that deep cleaning. [for those of you who don't know this - one of the greatest bane's of my existence is the fact that I have to clean my room, one of the coolest aspects of Beauty's room is that it magically cleans itself, believe me if I had a genie I would wish that I would always live in a magically neat house where everything was easy to find and never looked trashy] so I think that I'll end up being grumpy [but just a little :)]. BTW the utar is now sitting on my desk and I take it out and bang on it.
BIG, GIGANTIC, HUMONGOUS, EARTH-SHATTERING NEWS
I am now the proud owner of a 30gb video ipod.

Hip
Hip
Hurray


Hip
Hip
Hurray

Hip
Hip
Hurray

and there was great rejoicing

Yes the eponymous scales have fallen from my eyes and I now see how the rest of the world functions.

Even cooler: I got a black one.

(for those of you who care: I apologize for the more than normally atrocious punctuation. I actually considered not doing any punctuation at all for about five minutes until I got bored with the thought.)

Now for a serious bit:

My pastor at my church in Ill. told the church on Sunday that he was resigining to take a position in Georgia. I've only had the privilege of knowing him for about two years but what was incredible to me was the love that he had inspired in the church members. As he read his resignation letter the entire church was sobbing. It was such a huge blessing to see that it is possible to run a church with love and compassion and balance while still following the dictates of the Bible.

And I think that wraps it up:

"snick-snack the tale is done"

Are you Boring?

Recently, thanks to a certain reader (hey Matt) I have been accused of not having a life. Now having a strange and twisted mind I began to think: "What exactly constitutes a life?" Now we all think of people who don't have lives - those geeks who play online games for hours on end, people who hide in their dorm rooms for no good reason, people who study to much etc. etc. etc.
But go ask any person who "doesn't have a life" and I guarantee you that they will believe that they do have a life.
I think (scratch that: I know) that too often we judge having a life based on what we think is cool and normal. For me - having a life may mean practicing piano for two hours, going home and reading 4 books while munching on swedish fish, then banging on my utar and finally falling asleep watching MXC. For other people it may be going and playing basketball for 4 hours (ruining your knees by the way) and then staying up till 3 in the morning talking. Soooo, what I want to know is your idea of "having a life"

p.s. I'm feeling slightly satirical, so don't be surprised if I reply in a sarcastic manner. in fact I might post something horrendous next time - I just need to think about what.

R&U

A number of months ago (a year and a half to two years to be more precise) one of the music stores at which I teach lessons got a strange African tribal drum called
(drumroll please . . . )

(to be read in your basso profundo, NBA announcer voice)







The UDU!!!!

As you can see its not much more than a jug with two holes in it. In order to play the udu you smack the jug with your hands around, on, or away from the holes. Very simple, but surprisingly thereaputic even cathartic. I instantly knew that someday I wanted one of these but being a poor college student I knew that day was sometime in the future.


Well as one coach said:
"The future is now"

Ladies and Gentleman let me present you to:

My UtarAs you can see its flatter than the Udu (its actually the bass drum in the family), it also produces much more resonance and has very cool sounds. Plus when your really mad at someone/something you can pretend their face is the sounding hole and you get to bash it.

Anyway in the last 9 days we have had 8 days of rain. TAKE THAT GLOBAL WARMING!!!

Candy

Candy, Candy, Candy, all the live long day. Candy is so yummy, and so sweet. I like it hard, soft, gummy, crunchy, or the kind you have to suck on, sour too. I like chocolate, caramel, peanut butter, fruit-flavored, basically anything that doesn't have coconut or any kind of nut other than peanuts.

But the best candy of all is:



Swedish Fish








If you've never had them your an idiot.
If you don't like them, then your an even bigger idiot.
I'm sitting here eating a handful of my 3.5 lb box (rock on Jess and Dale) and thinking about the incomporable taste and sheer genius of the candy.

And you losers don't get any
hahahahahahahaha

I'm BAAAAAAAAAACK!!!!!!!!!!

Hail to the liberated college students, may your summers be long and your worries small

And may you return to your classes in the fall (maniacal laughter)

On Friday last week I graduated. Then I had my open house (which, despite my idiocy in not handing out more invitations, went very well). Then on Saturday the fun began - Not Justin coming and spending the weekend (though that was cool) but I GOT TO REALLY READ.

You see, I am an addict to reading - do you remember Dale's post where he told the world that he was getting himself high on reading? Well I understood that post and didn't understand why that was different than normal life. I inhale books - I'll read a 300 page book in about 2 hours. I can read all day, most of the night and then all day the next day and I love it. So I've read about 10 books since Saturday. (Note: this is why I haven't blogged - reading takes precedence over any other form of enjoyment. [note on the Note: this is probably a good reason why I don't have a girlfriend]). So I've read 4-5 Sc-Fi books, 2-3 novels, a little C.S. Lewis, a little Piper, getting ready to read Rob Bell and J.D. Salinger and all is right with the world. I feel like I've been climbing a roller-coaster hill for the past three years and I'm finally over the top and getting to enjoy that humongous hill.

So I feel sorry for you, you pitiful peons wasting your summers away with cheap movies, days at the beach, hanging with friends etc. etc. etc. Because you have missed out on the greatest enjoyment of all - a good book, no stupid interruptions, fresh air, warm sunlight, ahhhhhhh I 'm relaxed just writing about it. The best thing about it is that in August I know what you did last summer. But me . . . . I've been so far out of space, time, mind, imagination, to Xanadu and back, that nobody can ever take my journey away or trivialize it. It is completely unique and unparalled.

Now goodbye - I've got a book to read.

(there are three movie references buried in my last, real paragraph. If you can find them [one is easier than the others] [one is relatively recent, the other is both new and old, the last one is from a movie so important that everyone in America should be required to write a doctoral thesis on it, and most people don't even know it exists.] you get 10000 points --- even though the points don't matter. )

hurray?

Well, the end is here. Tonight is Baccalaureate, tomorrow is Commencement and the Registrars Office told me that I have already officialy graduated.

"Ladies and Gentleman, the fat lady has started to sing"

I'm not sure if I'm supremely excited - because if I'm excited why do I feel like a piece of regurgitated salami? I'm really happy to be done with classes, tests, projects, writing papers, endless waits in eternal lines for never-ending rehearsals that are always late and perpetualy frustrating. But I'm really going to miss my friends - being able to learn with them, travel with them, eat with them, tease them, make a fool of myself, learn from them, make fun of classes and argue the finer points of postmodernism and English literature. Mostly I miss the people who have gone before, Sleeps, Whit, Matty, Brian, Nina, to name a few. Too all of you friends who are still here (I'm not listing names cause: 1. I'll forget someone and have them mad at me and 2. you should already know who you are) its been a great ride. I'm not sure what precisely I have to do in the future but I know that I'm hesitating between dancing an Irish jig, running to the porcelain god, and crying.

THE END

"We have a Code Red!!!"

Ok, as we have grown up there are various milestones in our lives that separate children from teenagers and teenagers from adults and adults from middle-aged people and middle-aged people from old people and old people from dead people. One of the most important of these is getting that all-important driver's license. That plastic card that is incalculably priceless (and yes I meant to modify priceless with incalculable, so there, Justin). Anyway this post is about my good friend Brittany. you see, Brittany has had her permit for three years (THREE WHOLE YEARS OF HER LIFE HAS BEEN WASTED) [ok: I'm reasonably calm now]. Now being a good friend I have endeavored to "encourage" (read: shame) her into getting her license. And then I found out the crowning piece of knowledge.


Her parents told her that they would buy, BUY, her her own car when she got her license AND SHE STILL DOESN'T HAVE IT.


So blogging society/culture. Do me a favor make a comment on this post or visit Brittany's blog through my links (New Feature to this Blog) and tell her how much she needs her license.