Blow shit up.

Last night...
At J&M's:

Ryan: Would you rather never be able to use a spork or wear a fez?
Jeff: Fuck me! This is like the Alan Alda question!

At Oliver:

Ryan: I was talking to Michelle this morning and she said she would be in Overland–
Keith: When you say 'this morning', do you mean like 6am when you rolled over? [giggle]
Ryan: I was trying to spare your feelings.

Behind JRP:

Keith: [lighting a bottle rocket that was stuck in the ground] Shit! Too close to the penis!
Jeremy: [rolling away on the ground] Ahhh!
Keith: [putting his feet up to deflect the blast] Hahahaha! Awesome!

Ovah.

Term 1 is now complete, and I'm rather sad in a 'Wow, that was totally unexpected' sort of way. When I brought the kids back to the dorm for the last time yesterday we had a group hug and I was a little overwhelmed at how much I totally loved being around them every day...even if they did do stupid things and ignore directions sometimes. They'll always be my first class, and now I get to wonder what the next class will be like.

It's rather amazing how close Lee and I have gotten in just the span of three weeks. We went from not knowing each other at all to spending the better part of 12 hours together every day. The rest of the staff is wonderful: Keith, Michelle, Whitney, James, Samantha, the other James, Courtney, Jeremy, Laura (that's Lah-ruh to you pal), and so many others. I believe I've said it many times before, but they all rock.

And I'll get a chance to experience even more of the staff awesomeness when I move into the dorm this next week. That's right: for the first time since the first day of freshman year (which ended up being my only day living there), I will be living in a dormitory. I'll be closer to the rest of staff, I'll just drive home once a day rather than drive to Oliver twice or three times daily, and I'll be right across the street from the Rec, which is important since I've decided to start lifting actual weights again, rather than my year-long experiment with ProBodX. Which worked out fine when I was in the 98th percentile for fitness in my age group last summer from weightlifting, but for getting back into shape, maybe not so much. So this Tuesday morning at 6am, I begin my new workout schedule. This time I mean it. Seriously people. Shut up.

Anyway, just wanted to check in and say that I know this posting schedule is irregular, and I don't know how often I'll get to do it in the dorm since I won't have my computer on the internet, but whatever. 'Tis summer and I am having a blast with cool people and a cool job. Tonight we party; it will be a combination of bowling and a house in the country, and it will be supremo fun.

Choices.

Tonight, at J&M's new apartment:

Michelle: Would you rather have unlimited ice cream or unlimited Alan Alda?
Jeff: Shit!

Diplomacy, Round Three.

Spring 1906:
Keith: Can I have Norway?
Ryan: Um, no.
Keith: Okay!

Spring 1907:
Keith: So I'm taking Norway and Sweden.
Ryan: ... Yeah.

Staff t-shirt.

I just realized that I haven't updated this in about forever, so I'll just post to say that I started my job last Wednesday by meeting staff, all of whom I have come to greatly respect and admire; they're good people doing good work. We actually didn't pick kids up until Sunday, which I'll get to in a moment. We've had 14 hours of class already in the last two days (two of those hours was myself alone with the kids during evening session, which is anarchy but in a fun way). I came up with a great idea for said evening sessions that the students are already enjoying. And this is the first night I've spent at home since Wednesday evening, because I've either been at a dorm hanging out with staff, volunteering to help with a group of kids, or at KCI.

Why KCI, you might be asking? Because I spent nine damn hours there Sunday picking up kids at the airport. I was assigned to drive a group of other teaching assistants over there at noon so that we could all meet the kids at the plane and watch over them until the bus came at 3pm. So we get there at 11:45am and we're rounding up kids and trying to figure out lunch arrangements and desperately wishing for the bus to get there, which it finally did around 4pm. But my day wasn't finished like it should've been, as I was supposed to pick up excess luggage and follow the bus back. There was no luggage, but a couple of kids still hadn't arrived; it turns out that two flights coming in had to be diverted when a monsoon hit Kansas City and we ended up not leaving the airport until about 8:30, and didn't get back to the dorm until 9:45pm. Yeah.

On the plus side I do have the entire layout of KCI airport memorized, considering I drove around the damn thing six times during the course of the day (second lane from the left to 'Return to Terminals'). Parking staff knew me by sight in Terminals A & C, even though I did try to hit different booths on the way out each time; I probably picked up about fourteen parking slip things all totaled.

But we got every student that came into the airport, and that's no small feat since apparently a kid got left behind at the airport both terms last summer, so in short: Keith, James, and I rock. I still haven't gotten my gold star, but Lee (my instructor for Politics & Economics, who also rocks) did take us out for pints last night to celebrate the first day of class. Yay for instructional staff and our "academic planning"!

Alright, I'm currently reading A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (at Michelle's request; I'm trusting her judgment on everything so far and it is sooooo paying off. She rocks too.) So I'm gonna do some reading on that, then go to bed for a full night of sleep before possibly running at 6am. Cause I'm all about breakfast in the dorm cafeteria at 7:30am. Oh hell yes.

Palenque.

I meant to blog on this a few weeks ago when I read Eduardo Galeano's Upside Down in the course of two days and two nights during Finals Week, but the crush of other things prevented it until I remembered my favorite passage tonight. The entire book overall is definitely a must-read; it is a profoundly tragic, if ultimately uplifting, tale of the pitfalls and contradictions of imperialism and globalism as regards Latin America, and by extension the non-industrial world. Anyway, there are a series of sidenotes throughout the book, and one of them regarded the people of the Palenque in Columbia, and I thought I'd share the choice paragraph here.

Years have gone by, centuries, and Palenque survives. The people of Palenque continue to believe that the earth, their earth, is a body made of fields, jungles, wind, people, that it breathes through trees and cries through streams. They continue to believe that those who have enjoyed life will be rewarded in paradise and those who haven't will burn in hell, in the eternal fire reserved for the cold women and men who disobeyed the sacred voices that command us to live life with pleasure and passion.

I like that, a lot. I was once asked by a girl back home if I believed in God and I said 'I'm not sure.'* She said 'Do you think you'll go to Heaven?' And I responded 'Oh sure.' She goes 'How can you possibly believe that?' I said 'Because when I'm up to stamp my ticket, I will have lived my life sincerely and without judgement for anybody else. Hypocrisy is the worst sin of them all.'

I put the asterisk there because I wanted to expound on that a little more: I still don't know what I believe on that, if only because it never really crosses my mind. People say 'Oh you're an agnostic' and I go 'But that figures that I've thought about it and concluded that I didn't know whether God exists; I just haven't thought about it at all.' I do think about it though, and if I've concluded anything it's that I definitely don't believe in a God who micromanages, whether through deliberately picking every animal that stalks the earth, or smoting federal judges, or raining hellfire on the good people of Massachusetts. While the people who protest on behalf of a vengeful God are certainly within their rights, I just wonder why they want to believe in a deity that would frankly care about the morality of Africans using condoms when millions of people on that continent are dying from a disease we could stop. "For fear of seeming intolerant or uncertain, or just for lack of thinking, they talk about a God too small to be God," in the words of Killing the Buddha. If he is truly an awesome God, than He is beyond our capacity to see or imagine; perhaps then we should lower our eyes a bit more towards the earth, and our fellow men, and this life.

And this is a hell of a way to spend a Saturday evening. The lights are flickering, so I'm gonna shut this down and go read some Hemingway (by candlelight if necessary) and listen to KJHK until the tornadoes come.

Now I have to buy the damn album.

They just played another Sleater-Kinney song, this time 'What's Mine is Yours', and again it had very distinct tones of Jefferson Airplane, only not, you know, so out of control. This is starting to get like when I had collected three songs from the Decemberists' new album and finally got it after feeling as if I had been left out on the biggest and most brilliant secret known to man. Which was, in fact, the case.

Things I Love, #71.

I was listening to 'Wilderness' by Sleater-Kinney tonight on KJHK, only I thought that I was listening was some lost, obscure track by Jefferson Airplane with Grace Slick's searing vocals. When I realized it was instead this band that I've been seeing on damn near every music magazine cover over the past month, I was surprised, intrigued, then inspired. There is hope for music yet.

Suck ass, 'Star Wars' does.

With all apologies to those of the Star Wars persuasion, but Episode III ranked among the worst movies I've seen. I'll grant you that I have really yet to see the original three (IV through VI), but that does not discredit my account of Episode III being just bad in ways that were really rather avoidable. The dialogue and editing were atrocious, along with the overwrought pausing of the cameras and actors, trying to convey both an emotion and a grandeur that just do not exist. All of which upsets me because it should have been good: the plot and the symbolism are of course the stars of the show, but they should not have to laboriously carry a movie. Aside from the twisted psychological transformation of Anakin Skywalker into Vader and the taut meanings of 'empire' and 'republic', what else did this movie give us? Some will say that that's all it was supposed to provide, that it was meant as a set-up for Episode IV. I used to agree with this line of thought regarding 'placeholder' movies, back when I was an apologist for Matrix Reloaded, but no more. I now subscribe to the 'West Wing' type of plot development: keep your grand arcing storyline, but treat each episode as its own mini-play to deal with tangential stories. The problem with Episodes I through III is that there were no tangents worth exploring.

And that's enough about those things. What else has gone on this week? A lot of yearbooking stuff, specifically meetings with publishing companies. On behalf of the advisors I have taken the lead role in the discussions for next year's book, which we have to bid out to publishers in order to get the best base price and committment of quality before we sign the contract and start getting into details. This week I met here at KU with representatives from three companies (with one of those meetings being just myself and the rep, sans advisors), and also went to KC on Wednesday to tour the facility of one of the publishers. It was a very nice experience: they arranged a personal plant tour and a group of people (the rep, the new head of the customer service dept, the plant manager, and the Midwest sales manager) all took me out to lunch, which was both shrewd and appreciated. Afterwards I went downtown to visit Hammerpress Studios, and let me just say that I could easily spend a lot of money in there. They do letterpress printing, which is so rare anymore, on just about anything you could want: CD cases, thank you notes, invitations, business cards, bookmarks, postcards. The visual strength comes out, though, in the concert and event posters that cover an entire wall of the facility; the posters are also on sale, and I came sooo very close to buying a Decemberists poster from when they played the Granada in April (a concert I couldn't go to because it was right before my second Soc. Theory exam). Anyway, I told the proprietor that I wished he did books, and his response leads me to think that there might be an option here to potentially publish our own yearbook. I'm probably dreaming, but hey it is the summer; I have until August to think up outlandish ideas in my head.

Other than that, I've just been buying more music from iTunes music store: Amy Ray's album Prom (which is a rocking lesbian tour de force...what?), Antony and the Johnson's 'Fistfuls of Love' (which I found through NYU's radio station), and an EP from José González titled Crosses (which is hauntingly beautiful). I'm also making my way through a book about typography, which really shouldn't matter all that much to you all but it's rather enlightening for me about the proper forms of fonts and publishing. But I think this font geekdom is nicely balanced by PongBall, a Church of Beer production, created Monday night by the four founding members of the Church. Consisting of a ping pong ball, three plastic cups, and three floors worth of stairs and landings, it is sure to storm the nation just as soon as we finalize the team version of PongBall. Hell, we made 'cockblocking' into an official position in the game, so that alone should be worth something.


I desperately need to get back to more specific and timely posts.

Melancholyonthemorningafter.

They tell me I am done here, but I feel I was just getting started.

Commencement yesterday was a surprising gamut of emotions, spurred not least of all by the gamut of people that you walk through on the Hill. That experience was one of the coolest of my life, and it went much too quickly. A day that started with me just wanting to get it over without any hassle became a day that I didn't want to end.

As I said the other night, I did not feel emotional at all this week when I thought about myself and graduation; it was always when I thought about others when I felt that wondrous mixture of excitement & sadness. When I thought about the connection that my friends have to KU, that it has changed their lives in ways that I cannot understand now, but hopefully will soon (which is not to say that KU has not changed my life, but that I think it is on a different level):

Jeff and Michelle and the five years and a lifetime they've spent loving this place, even if it does get on their last nerve sometimes. Tom and the idealism that in his time here has been replaced by a determined focus which, though tempered by experience, will get him everywhere he wants to go. Anna and the wonderful collection of achievements and awards she has racked up in her time here, mere symbols of a KU career like few others; hell, her attitude and friendship alone is deserving of a Chancellor's award.

My parents stayed here last night before leaving early, so I just stayed here too and talked to them. And it was early on in the evening that I realized just why I was feeling so melancholy about this day that was supposed to be so redundant: I kinda feel cheated. Not on the education, mind you, or the opportunities I have had, or even on the people I have met as they have been absolutely amazing, each of them. But I wish I had met more, that I had pulled an all-nighter, that I had been able to share my one staggeringly drunk night with somebody, that I had ordered more pizzas at 1:30am and not given a damn the next day when I try to work out.

Sheesh, for a guy who is not even leaving yet I am certainly being melodramatic. I know everybody has their own KU experience, and that none is typical or ideal for any other. But to be honest, all week I could not help but feel a certain sense of envy for the fraternity and sorority members; for four years they have lived with each other, and done more for each other than I could imagine. The seniors come in as a class in themselves, and to be in a position where you can always have that core group there, no matter what, must be amazing. I have one of those myself, but it came across by sheer accident, coincidence that my upstairs neighbors just happen to be the greatest people in the world, or that the president of the KU Dems was in one of my first classes here at KU. For the Greeks, those ties are forged in a different manner, but it is the same result: a collection of wonderful individuals who make up the tapestry of KU that we will always remember. I cannot imagine living with a group of people for four years and sharing everything with them, only to break up and leave within the span of a week. Perhaps it is not as abrupt as that, but everything else is: you walk down the Hill and then the line of people ends; you're drinking that first glass of champagne and then it empties; you go to bed not wanting to lose this feeling, but the next morning comes.

That morning is now, and I am in a position unlike almost any other student here: I get a free year. No graduation or degree requirements (just the classes I want), no fretting about what comes next (that will all get sorted out in due time, so why worry), no more doe-eyed look like I still just stepped off the bus. This is my year to do with whatever I wish, and I wish do a lot, starting first and foremost with taking this most wonderful, most beautiful yearbook ever out of my head and putting it on paper for all the world to see.



And for your enjoyment, from one of my most favorite songs ever, 'Strange Condition' by Pete Yorn, from his album ... wait for it ... Musicforthemorningafter. =)

And it’s a strange condition,
A day in prison,
It’s got me out of my head
And I don’t know what I came for.

Send me the money, baby,
Do not leave out the wage.
You know you’re the best thing ever
To come out of this place,

Überpost. (Or: How I learned to stop dawdling and update this damn thing.)

So I'm graduating in about a day and a half. I finished up my papers (Korean history final and Seminar thesis) and handed them in Tuesday morning, two days before deadline, to get them out of the way. Then I just slacked around and read until my one and only final, Wednesday night, for Western Civ 2, which I had no doubts about. Since then I've just been doing a lot of napping in this damn heat, mainly because I'm too proud to give in and turn on the air conditioner; I figure if I've made it this far, than surely I can last through the weekend until the 70s hit again. But I doubt my mom and sister will like my no AC policy.

And for those just tuning in, my family has decided to convert my one-bedroom apt. into a hotel of sorts. My parents will be kicking me out of my bed for Sat. and Sun. nights, while my sister will be residing as well on Saturday night. I've already said my share about this to parties concerned; apparently I'm like Brazil or India in the United Nations: despite my vested interests and involvement, I'm denied the veto. Or something like that.

I broke down twice today and bought things that I honestly should've waited or let other people buy for me. The Design of Dissent was just sitting there at Borders, taunting me and destroying every reason I could think of not to buy it; alas, the appeal was too great (that and the 25% coupon and 10% total purchase discount I was banking on for the trip to Borders). Also at Borders I got a Moleskine sketchbook and the new Paste magazine, which includes a sampler CD. On said sampler was another track from the new Decemberists album, Picaresque. I already had a couple other songs from it, but this one was the straw that stirred the drink, as I went ahead and bought the whole thing through iTunes Music Store. The words 'magnificent,' 'mystical,' and 'sublime' do not even begin to do this album justice. If I could I would reprint the lyrics, in their entirety, in next year's Jayhawker. Who the hell cares if they're not students and the songs have nothing to do with KU? Everyone should know these words.

Went to apparently one of the oldest KU traditions tonight: the All University Dinner. One of the few on-campus events where alcohol is allowed to be served (red and white wine in funky milk-type bottles, hee!), it is the scene for the Chancellor's annual State of the University speech and the conferring of KU's highest honors, the Distinguished Service Citation. I'll forever know it as the night that somebody managed to fuck up a perfectly good piece of steak, the bastards (who the hell puts a cheese/butter sauce, mixed with lobster, on a steak? Honestly).

So I'm really not emotional about graduation, at least I wasn't until we started singing the Alma Mater at the end of the dinner, and I thought about how that caps off the ceremony proper on Sunday, the ceremony that I decided to go ahead and skip; just Walk down the Hill with everybody else, finally go through the Campanile, and then head out with the family in search of a good Chinese food buffet. But now I'm starting to lean again towards the ceremony, even though I could easily save my cap & gown and go to the ceremony next year when I don't have to worry about my parents hanging out in the damn heat. This is still up in the air.

So this was a rather nice year for me on the women-front; had a couple of firsts (into what categories those fall, I will not state here), met lots of great girls and had some promising situations, all of which I have impressively managed to muck up in one way or another. Not that I know exactly what happened, mind you; one told me she didn't want to date anymore and another said she didn't want a relationship after all. Which is fine really; it's just the lack of understanding about those things that keep a guy awake at 2am in the occasional morning. Anyway, I'm trying to push on and get to know some other girls a bit more, not to badger them into going out with me but just hopefully form some sort of connection there that they can see me and all of my wonderfulness™, but still keep from falling into the 'I like you as a friend' trap [I have this shirt by the way, and it's verrry pink] so that maybe, potentially something more can bloom. I'm probably failing at this as well; my biggest fear is seeming toooo interested and pestering, which then leads me to go to the other extreme of not going for it at the time or place that I should. I hear that there is this word called 'woo'; I should find whoever came up with it and bash him over the head. Not that I'm frustrated or anything, of course.

So I don't know what the point is to any of this, and there are many many things that I'm leaving out, such as the first two completed books on my summer reading list, but it's getting late and I'm hot and I'll probably wake up tomorrow and decide to redact a lot of the above paragraph. But if I did, I'd probably redact that I was redacting, and thus you would never know. Unless you saw the redaction before it was redacted. You know what man, fuck this; I'm out.

Oh! Canada.

First British Columbia did what no other state has ever done before: they formed a citizen's commission on electoral reform, then allowed a public referendum on changing the very nature of the electoral system. And guess what? It looks as though BCers are responding with a Yes! to proportional representation, which happens to be a pet project of mine. Yay for them and I can only hope this serves as an example for a few bold states here in the US...yes Oregon, I'm looking at you. You already got rid of voting day, why not be even more daring?

Then this morning I was browsing through Today's Front Pages and came across this Member of Parliament (who is in the news for switching parties before a vote of confidence, which may not mean that much to you but I'm a parliamentary nerd): who knew Canada had this girl tucked away in the halls of Ottawa? I can think of some new uses for maple syrup now... Ew, did I really just say that?

Oh be still my heart.

Via Coudal: The site of my dreams. A collection of almost every Olympic poster worth displaying (and some that probably aren't worth it but still a boon for collectors or researchers); the 1992 (both Barcelona & Albertville), 1998 Nagano and 2000 Sydney ones are especially pleasing.

Vacation.

Today, on the Hill while playing catch:

Ryan: So my friend who graduates today is moving to Amsterdam in two weeks to be with her boyfriend who works for an international consulting firm.
Jeff: *pauses in throwing motion*
Ryan: She'll be spending her winters in Spain and summers in Italy.
Jeff: You know how bad I want to leave this state? I would commit a federal crime to get sent to Terra Haute for a vacation. And just my luck, they'd send me to Leavenworth instead.

What wonderful noise.

The Guardian does a most proper tribute to the song that singlehandedly changed my life and introduced me to rock & roll.

"How does it feel?" doesn't come out of his mouth; the words explode in it. And here you understand what Dylan meant when he said, in 1966, speaking of the pages of noise he'd scribbled: "I had never thought of it as a song, until one day I was at the piano, and on the paper it was singing, 'How does it feel?'" Dylan may sing the verses; the chorus sings him.

"When I heard Like a Rolling Stone," said Frank Zappa, in 1965 a 24-year-old Los Angeles satirist, "I wanted to quit the music business because I felt: 'If this wins and it does what it's supposed to do, I don't need to do anything else.'"

Secrets we knew I was keeping.

I'm taking this from Alison, because it's been a while since last posting and that's not cool.

A - Age you got your first kiss: Twenty-one.
B - Band/Song listening to right now: Dave Matthews Band, "Two Step."
C - Crush: Well there is this one girl who has indeed caught my fancy...
D - Dad's name: Virgil.
E - Easiest person(s) to talk to: Tom, Jeff, Michelle, the Parents (else they get mad at me for not mentioning them in yet another thing).
F - Favorite bands/artists at the moment: Oh the Decemberists, how you've snatched me away from everything under the sun.
G - Gummy worms or gummy bears? Worms rule; you can pull on the sumbitches, and get different flavors in one thing.
H - Hometown: Humboldt, Kansas.
I - Instruments: Used to play saxophone and piano, now I use Adobe InDesign & PhotoShop to make beautiful things.
J - Junior High: Zillah, then Humboldt Middle School
K - Kids: S'pose, if only to raise the cutest daughter known to man.
L - Longest car ride ever: Oh let us not even go there.
M - Mom's name: Sharon.
N - Nicknames: Rhino, Scarecrow, Sparrow, Scarface (old track accident), Woody (after the woodpecker! Perverts...).
O - One wish: To create a work of genius and beauty that is the culmination of everything I've ever learned, felt and thought.
P - Phobia[s]: Loneliness, bugs, awkwardness, bugs, horror flicks, bugs.
Q - Quote(s): How about just the most recent? "No matter how much I walk, I will never reach it. For what does Utopia serve? For this it serves: to walk." –Eduardo Galeano
R - Reason to smile: I'm about to graduate, I've started planning my 'opus', and I'm going soon to meet Mr. Schooner for our weekly dance with the devil.
S - Song you sang last: I think it was parts of 'The Engine Driver' by the Decemberists earlier today.
T - Time you woke up [today]: 6am the first time to convince myself not to work out today, then 7am for sure.
U - Unknown fact about me: I can't whistle.
V - Vegetable you hate: Most of them.
W - Worst habit(s): Picking at the skin around my fingernails; it's my nervous condition.
X - X-rays you have had: Both feet and right arm, that I can remember; maybe some others for my surgeries.
**where is Y?**
Z- Zodiac sign: Capricorn.

Lists.

I'm gonna be honest with you: I spend an assload of time on the internet. An unbelievable amount of time really, just dicking around and for the most part checking the same damn websites about two hundred times a day, so I love coming across new sites. But if I had to choose one webpage as the supremo place to waste I-kid-you-not hours, that would have to be the Lists at McSweeney's Internet Tendency [check the linkie to your right]. Nowhere near your standard top-ten lists, they are submitted by users who believe just as strongly in unintentional ironic comedy as I do. I have my own favorite lists to savour here, but for an instant classic go to Brainstorming Ted Nugent's Vegan Cookbook; humour never had it so good.

By another name.

Tonight, at J&M's:

Michelle: It hurts. *pointing to leg*
Jeff: What does?
Michelle: This.. *continues pointing*
Jeff: That's called a hamstring; it's what Ken Griffey Jr. pulls every year.

Things I Love, #26.

The way the Decemberists' Colin Meloy warbles 'bones' and 'home' before the last chorus in my new co-favorite song The Engine Driver. Beautiful, beautiful stuff; if I could publish the lyrics on the cover of next year's Jayhawker I sooo would. (Oh, the other co-favorite? Golden Age of Radio by Josh Ritter. I'm not really a country guy, but that's because Toby Keith-crap is ever-present instead of this most wonderful song.)

"Tuning in to hear an echo is not our idea of a good time."

Read this article on the joy of radio, all of radio; smile; anxiously await summer and the thought of driving with windows down and stereo on. Bonus points if you leave your iPod behind.