The most beautiful moment of my life (thus far)

It was the day of my 8:00 a.m. Engineering final exam.  I was killing time in my dorm because I set my alarm to 6:30 out of fear of oversleeping.  I grabbed a pop tart and was about to take off at about 7:45 because I then decided I wanted to throw on a fleece and not freeze my ass off on the walk down the hill to the building where my exam took place.  I started listening to Arcade Fire's "Wake Up" not for any reason in particular other than that it's a good song and the title struck me as funny considering that it was 8 a.m.  I'm putting up the song just for the purpose of recreating the story as the song played out. 

Anyway, as I passed the east side of Bursley a bunch of deer came out of the woods right where I was standing, literally walking all around me, completely calm, presumably unspooked by college kids walking on their turf 24/7.  Right as they were walking in front of me the sun broke over the horizon right in time with the part of the song where it's all euphoric and epic sounding.  That was all that I really needed to assure me that I was going to utterly devastate my final exam (which I did), but to top it off, the exact second that I stepped into the building, the song reached the tempo change near the end (you know the part) and I literally skipped the rest of the way to my exam.

Never again will a moment as musical and magical and well-timed ever happen in my life.  Well, I hope it does, but that Thursday morning is going to be hard to beat. 

Everything Sorta Sucks

Might as well get the inane tripe out of the way - everything sort of does actually suck.  It's the end of the semester and not only am I under a large amount of stress (arguably since the first time since midway through my junior year of high school), I am not catching a break.  Not catching a break being a gross understatement.

The most far removed from the shitstorm was the organic chemistry exam I am positive I didn't do well on at all.  That was four minutes ago, really, so maybe it isn't that far removed and the adverse effects just haven't shown themselves yet.  I've also been missing classes due to not being able to wake up due to very poor sleep patterns.  Not insomnia level (I've been there, trust me) but enough to keep me from being alert.  And on top of that I've also been having memory issues that may have arisen from this.  I misplace things much more than usual and forget to charge my phone and forget when I have to be places and basically everything important. 

Also here goes some nerdy bullshit: we recently did an engineering project for my programming class that involved reading in commands for creating a playlist and then writing these playlists into file.  The output of my program matched the output of the sample program we're given exactly, but I got a 28/85.  Why?  My program refuses to write playlists into file for any filename that ends with a character that isn't a letter.  Which makes no sense, because this error wasn't present when I submitted it.  Which means that either someone fucked with my code, or that they fucked up their grading program (which they did, since most kids in the damn class actually got a 28 out of 85 and somehow this is our fault, this error was completely unforeseeable based on the sample music libraries and playlist names we were told to use and also not at all addressed in the project specification...).  Basically, fuck this.  It's like if you submitted a ten-page paper and only had the third page graded because the rest were printed on off-white paper or something completely stupid like that.  "You were supposed to take into account that only every 10th page is white and we don't read off-white here - this is a university, bitch".

So anyway, this was one of two contributing factors toward me cancelling a visit to Ann Arbor to go to see an event played by the student organization discussed in "Fuck Math" (avoiding calling them by name so as not to appear on blog search for them, which is a bit neurotic).  I needed the time to try to salvage my grade and actually pass this damn class which I was previously doing fine in.  The other reason is that I was planning on going to the funeral of a friend of mine who committed suicide last Thursday.

Okay, here comes the genuinely depressing part. 

Might as well get this out of the way - I'm not going to his funeral due to this engineering fiasco, either.  It's the same day as the event.  I feel like a gigantic asshole, too - I never want to come across as the person who didn't care enough to trek back home to say goodbye to his friend.  I am angry that this had to happen, too.  Everything.  This is actually the first time that I've ever lost anybody that I was close to.  And even worse is the fact that it was a suicide.  It's worse because even though we all know better, I can't help but think that I could have prevented this.  Don't criticize me for thinking that - it is, I feel, a natural response when something like this happens - even though realistically I could not, since we don't even live in the same city anymore.  Guilt that you didn't make someone's life nice enough for them to want to keep living, I mean.  I don't want to get into the details my relationship with him here, but it needs to be said that he was one of my favorite people.  I knew him through pit and tennis and high school and he was always putting smiles on everybody's faces.  He is missed deeply.  I miss him deeply.

The one spot of hope in this entire event is that I know for sure that the one real friend I've even made on campus was a great choice.  My neighbor Danny Boy (actually a girl, but I use nicknames here) heard me crying - understandable considering that I pretty much lost it after hearing the news - and came over a little while later to see what was up. (Thank you for not doing this while I was sobbing hysterically, by the way, that would have been incredibly awkward.)  I told her about what happened and she spent the next hour comforting me like a surrogate mother or something, even though it's questionable whether I needed it at that point anymore.  (Well I did, it's just that I was done bawling and had moved onto a shock-like "what the hell do I do now" state.)  It was, by a mile, the nicest thing anybody's ever done for me on campus.  I was given an incredible display of compassion that I won't ever forget and I'm so grateful for it.  I just really hope that such a display ever needs to be given again.  Because that would suck even more.

Unfortunately, that's not all.  A major part of what's seriously sucking can't even be discussed on this blog because it involves a confessed reader.  Which sucks.  I guess maybe there'll come a day for this subject to be discussed at length, but that time is not now.

The more important part of those two months

Surprisingly not nearly as much comes to mind as remarkable or memorable.  But I'll tell you about classes.

My chem lab is ending in a super-long lab that is not going incredibly well, which sucks because, as of this writing, there is only one lab session remaining which supposedly ought to be dedicated to reorganizing our equipment to make sure that we haven't lost anything.  It's going to be a clusterfuck on Friday.  My chem lecture has also devolved into the "routine" of organic chemistry, which no longer deals with understanding thoroughly the structure behind organic molecules and their reactions, but with memorizing what sort of materials do what when you mix them together.  I am not excited about this.  Engineering is still programming, but thankfully we've moved beyond C++.  This was still quite easy for me, but still tedious.  I can't even remember if I mentioned this but I took a class where we learned the basics of C++ my sophomore year.  I hated it and thought I wouldn't remember any of it but that little bit set me leaps and bounds ahead of everybody else in my class.  Now we're in MATLAB (which is supposedly a common programming language for engineers, but I wouldn't know) and it's still remarkably easy.  I really hope I wind up with an A because any less is indicative of my laziness rather than any sort of difficulty in understanding the class.  Calculus... well, let's just say I'm glad I didn't take Calc I again, because I am pretty well caught up to what we're doing now, but it's damn difficult.  My A on the first exam was pretty definitively a fluke, as I did worse on the second exam despite the average being a bit higher.  It was still a B+ but the decrease in confidence in the material we were learning was much more remarkable.  Needless to say it is my most difficult class.  But I'll still end up with an A or a high B assuming I stay consistent with my final exam. 

The whole DJ business with "Fuck Math" has not progressed at all since I posted it.  I'm pretty sure it's not going to happen due to stricter noise enforcements due to complaints. (thank you, jackass-in-my-hall-who-loves-blink-182-too-much-to-stay-even-remotely-quiet-about-it)  That and they still haven't moved the furniture out of the room.  Oh well.  At least the whole path to becoming a DJ is a lot clearer and interesting.  On my wish list for Christmas is a mixer with two iPod components that you can essentially operate like a turntable, all for around $100.  It's pretty amateur, but that's exactly what I am, is it not?  Joining MEDMA is the best thing I've done on campus, as I've discovered so much great music and enjoy listening to it.  Not so much finding it though.  The talent required to make good EDM is a lot less obvious to many than it is for rock music or other genres, so as a result, there's a lot more shit to weed through.  Luckily MEDMA has an active forum supported mainly by its core members where new music is posted with healthy frequency, and most of it is actually good.

The best night on campus involved a visit from a man named Coon (which also rather hilariously involved an incident with a raccoon only a few feet away from biting range crawling out of a garbage can at the bus stop).  It was the day of the Michigan vs. Michigan State game.  Before entering we went "pre-gaming" which didn't actually involve any drinking, but rather beating the shit out of a green sedan with a sledgehammer to raise money for breast cancer awareness. (breast cancer = foreshadowing) We left after the third quarter when it was apparent that we were going to get our asses handed to us.  Later that night, after a game of foursquare in Northwood apartments, we returned to central campus to get in line for a midnight screening of "the Citizen Kane of bad movies," The Room.  Jesus.  Fucking.  Christ.  Disregard the fact that we were practically the first people in line and thus waited an unnecessary amount of time to get in.  Disregard the fact that our football team lost miserably.  This, ladies and gentlemen, made up for it by the truckload.  This is easily the most fun I've ever had at a movie screening in my life.  More fun than the now-infamous G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.  GO SEE THIS MOVIE.  It will change your life.  And bring spoons.  Lots of em.  After this awesomeness we returned to the central bus stop where we ran into some of the funniest drunk people ever.

Tall guy: "Hey I totally know you from somewhere!"
Short guy: "Really?"
Tall guy: "Maybe."

Same tall guy:  "Have you ever taken a piss outside of the C.C. Little building?"
Me: "No."
Same tall guy: (awestruck) "Oh, it's beautiful..."

Me: "Dude, I only ever see you at the bus stop at 2 a.m."
Different short guy: "I think I'm about as drunk and high as I was last time, too."

Michigan State student:  (screaming, tears streaming down his face) "Yeah, that's right!  I can't read and I can't write!  I only go to a fucking... university!  I'm just an idiot!  FUCK ALL OF YOU.  FUCK ALL OF YOU."

Then there was a fight that broke out right in front of the last bus back to North, so we ended up half-assedly attempting to break it up and calling the cops instead of getting on.  I felt mildly heroic.  But then we walked the 20-30 minute trek back North instead, only making it back at 3:30 (keep in mind it took about an hour to even get close to getting on a bus).  It was a great day.

I saw a series of shows through knowing a ton of theater kids, since I hang out most often with my neighbor and my most-frequently-seen comrade from high school, both of whom are actors.  One of them was called The Diver, which was a show about a woman with multiple personalities (or something) that was generally more concerned with packing as much Japanese folklore and symbolism into itself in one hour than it was with being coherent.  But of course it was good.  I also attended an event known as 24 hour theater in which several one-act plays are written, rehearsed and performed in one day-long marathon.  It was beautiful.  Mostly because every one of them was hilarious, but for completely different reasons.

Other than that, nothing to report other than probable mental illness and general neurosis.  The longest paragraph I've ever written is stored as a draft describing pretty much everything I can possibly hate about myself.  I don't think I should delete it but I don't think I'm going to post it either.  Instead I'll tease you with its existence.  Haha.  Sucks to be you.  But then again it also apparently sucks to be me.  Anyway, after fall break things just sorta went downhill with regards to my mental health.  I can't be left alone like this.  The short of it all is that I have a semi-immature dependency on other people.  And I don't want to say it because it sounds horrible, but I pretty much depend on other people to determine my self-worth.  This is a huge problem, and I recognize it.  I'm doing everything that I can to fix it, but I'm not sure I want to.  I am just not a person who stays away from connecting to people, and a true connection almost always involves some sort of give-and-take relationship.  Otherwise, why bother talking to someone?

Two months

Hey, I'm back.  Kinda, anyway.  I didn't really leave.  In fact I wrote a lot of disturbing stuff that I never ended up posting whenever I felt like shit, which happened a lot more often than usual in the past two months or so.  Maybe I'll post it later (but it is awful disturbing).  For the sake of not having an entire month without posting on my track record, here's a quick overview of what has gone down when I've been at home (overall about nine days since moving to Ann Arbor), more or less in order. 

• Watched the majority of Season 4 of Lost in one sitting with my friend JK overnight.
• Went to see my sister/my high school marching band play their final competition for the 2010 season and WIN.  I was so proud, and jealous that it wasn't me.  However I'll still maintain that my performance at the same competition in 2009, despite only placing third, was the best I've ever played (and, perhaps not-so-coincidentally, the last show I played on a field).  Caught up with old friends. 
• Got yelled at for stealing season 2 of Gossip Girl, subsequently stole season 1 of Glee. (arguably more heterosexual)
• Visited K College, met up with sweet people, played duets on a piano in my friend's hall, made an epic photobooth album with a girl and then (much) later asked her out awkwardly.  Yeah... still single.  But it was still a good night. 
• Returned later for one day so that I could attend my own Eagle ceremony (Eagle Scout!  Now I almost seem cooler, I think.)  Also awkward, but there were tacos.
• Got a haircut, then a ride back to Ann Arbor from my friend who goes to Eastern Michigan in Ypsilanti.  Fun stuff.
• Returned home for Thanksgiving with cool people, had a very good car ride conversation about relationships and politics and geography and college and life in general. 
• Did absolutely nothing for the first few days.  Bored out of my mind.
• Thanksgiving: hyperactive seven-year-old cousin crawls all over head, I pass out from overeating, watch the Lions get their asses handed to them, then sleep all the way back to Portage from Niles.  Later that night go to see Deathly Hallows the second time with my family (First time occurred in AA, more on that later) It was awesome.  Narrowly dodged stepping in puke on the sidewalk both when entering and exiting the theater.  Almost get killed by my dad hitting a deer on the passenger's side when he was driving home.  It was terrifying. 
• Watched the Lost Season 5 finale with JKuo (we watched season five separately and then met up for this later).  Easily the most frustrating and confusing episode of television ever made.  We both shat our pants, even though I knew what was going to happen.  After, we ran to McD's and got the McRib.  Delicious.
• Hung out with people at Tiger's house (I'm having trouble remembering what nickname's I'm giving people.)  Then went to another friend's house and hung out with a bunch of cool nerdy people and I watched some kid play this game called "LSD" which is the rarest game released on the PS2.  It's pretty much exactly what it says on the tin.  It was terrifying.  I then went on Omegle for several hours and saw many, many dicks.  It was a blast.  We watched Wizards again!
• Made the traverse to a newer friend's house the next night after waking up around noon, had a severe allergic reaction to his cat and then went home and fell asleep around midnight.  I was up for about 12 hours total.  We built a blanket fort and watched Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (for about the 8th time in a row) and talked about our college adventures. 

I'll make an update about what's gone on when I was actually at college later.  

Fuck Math

I wanna talk about techno. 

I'm going to attempt to relive my experiences so far and so few with MEDMA that have brought me to the cusp of a potentially life-altering opportunity.  I joined initially upon hearing about the trips, the parties, and the free mixes that came with being a due-paid member, which I now am.  And of course, the free DJ lessons.  Last weekend I went to one of those things and vaguely learned how to beatmatch, which is really all the work that a DJ ever does it seems besides selecting sets (which for us usually done beforehand) and hunting down new tracks on the internet. 

Literally while I was out word came of an event that is very near and dear to the hearts of the members of 6th floor Douglas in Bursley Hall: the empty quad at the end of the hall has been approved for us to use it however we like.  What exactly would we like?  The members who were in on the planning process for the club had such fantastic if impractical ideas such as a pool or a lounge.  Since these ideas are lame they took it over to 6th Bartlett  (the female counterpart to 6th Douglas) and almost unanimously received feedback such as "nightclub" "stripper poles" and "glass cases".  At which point our penises got the better of us and we decided to do exactly that. 

I was still in transit on the bus back to north when the guy who was spearheading the whole operation started talking to my roommate about the plans, who happened to bring up the fact that I was both in MEDMA and that I had downloaded over 24 hours of electronic dance music from their mix series website.  When I walked in they asked me about MEDMA (since I am the only person in it in our hall) so I obviously let them know that I was taking free DJ lessons at down on central.  He replied that he had already invested in soundproofing materials for the entire room.

Suddenly I am the official DJ of a makeshift nightclub on the west side of Bursley. 

So if you happen to be reading this, here is my plea: give me music.  I am not that huge into electronic dance music nor have I ever had any interest in the factioning of music into highly obscure genres, which is a must, apparently, for members of MEDMA.  I need private lessons so that I can actually be competent.  I need to know where I can find affordable equipment.  Come on, internet, don't let me down!

More and more

For the sole sake of putting a downer on what should be joyful, there seems to be a sort of pattern going on with me and new experiences.  It seems like the more I am exposed to the less I know what I am as a person.  I realize that that is completely up to my own making but I'm not really sure at all what to do with the reins that have been handed to me.  Life may be a sandbox, but it's full of quicksand when you don't have the sort of self-assured attitude to tell you that you know what you're actually doing, where you're going in life, etc.

I'm really sick of being down.  At this point I have absolutely no reason to be and the only thing I can attribute my ongoing depression to is "wiring loose inside my head" which is what most people will concede for the sole purpose of getting access to medication. Well, they're right.  If I'm given all these opportunities to enjoy myself and I worry about whether enjoying myself is even the best option, then I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.  Fuck it all, because I'm going to pull a junior year and overextend myself.  If I didn't feel good about sacrificing all of my free time during those times, I felt welcomed at the very least, and came out of it with some pretty strong ties that lasted a while at least.  After I was done with it all - both insanely hard high school classes and a 24/7 commitment to music - I felt better than I'd ever felt in my entire life.  I felt connected.  Supported.  Precisely at the beginning of the posts that are still available to read here.  If I fuck up, that's okay.  I keep telling myself that I don't have much of an ego so that I don't let it get damaged, but the truth is that I need some fucking self-respect to get anywhere in life and if I sacrifice that at the expense of disappointment then there is no point in living.  So no more self-pity.  I guess that I'm learning to succeed in that regard.

The original intent of this post was to describe some of the activities I've done since getting on campus but not being around people that I can talk to about anything has made me pretty introspective which as you can see is not often good.  But the whole thing about ego was motivated by something that is only semi-related.  The first tale of college begins in the Union on an otherwise mundane Wednesday. (See what I did there?)  I was auditioning for this percussion ensemble called "Groove" which is basically alternative, high energy drumming on uncommon and unconventional instruments in the same niche as the incredible "Stomp" show.  Spoiler alert!  I didn't make the cut.  But I think I just barely missed it, in a rare streak of optimism.  Anyway, the thing lasted three hours (it was the second of two mass group auditions of about thirty people each) and consisted of three parts: a drumming audition (nailed it), a stomping audition (did not nail it, this is probably what killed me), and a special talent audition (I read poetry.  I got one of the best crowd responses, which felt good.)

That's pretty much the shortest version of the story possible.  But the thing is that when I found out I did not make the cut, I felt surprisingly bad.  Like I was worried at first that it was because I was being a sore loser, and there have been a small case of that going on.  Basically, I was worried that I was upset by the fact that not making the cut reflected poorly on my skills as a percussionist (even though they didn't - stomping just isn't part of my "move set" I guess).  But then I realized that, at that point in time, the three hours I spent auditioning were the best three hours I spent on campus.  This was the closest thing to companionship I've had, and if you have read any other post here, you can probably guess that that's one of the most critical contributors to my general happiness.  There was one point where the entire audition just devolved into a giant circle of people making beats with their feet and their hands while we circulated in and out dancing, yelling, stomping, clapping, and generally going wild.  That is the sort of family I wanted out of drum corps (and the one that I got out of marching band, thankfully, and I have become so very appreciative of the time I spent in band since moving to Ann Arbor).  And so the feeling that I got upon finding out that I did not make it was not actually feeling sorry for myself, it was jealousy.  Being at the audition made me realize that I wanted to spend my time on campus with all those people.  It's sort of like getting turned down for a job that you want because you'd actually be happy doing it, not for the usual superficial monetary reasons.  I'm over it though.  If I didn't make it (and I realize this is cocky) then it's not as if very many others from the group made it in.  I guess it was just more of a one-time gathering of people who are incredibly cool.

I might as well go over the special talent section of the audition, because it featured some of the most ridiculous acts you've ever seen in your life.  There was a kid (named Tobias of all things) who was somehow insanely good with a yo-yo, a guy who turned off the lights and pretended to be the guy from relaxation tapes while we all had our eyes closed, and in the meantime kept inserting weird Batman references into the thing before starting to scream and then we realized that he had changed into a Batman costume and it was the coolest thing ever, freestyle rapping, a duet cover of "Fuck You" by Cee-Lo Green played on a ukulele, a grad student who demonstrated her ability to B.S. by presenting some other student's powerpoint presentation on nuclear energy without any knowledge of the subject or ever having previously seen the slides, and this is a really long sentence, and stand-up comedy, and a Flight of the Conchords cover, and Bhangra dancing, and stupid human body tricks, and original songs, and way too many other things.

The next notable activity involved an impromptu swarming of my room by some kids in the hall who wanted to play frisbee.  I joined just for a few minutes, and we went down to the North Campus Diag because Bursley was too much on a hill.  Then after about ten minutes we were asked by three other students if we wanted to go play ultimate frisbee in the reflecting pool.  I didn't know there was a reflecting pool at Michigan.  This is it:

So we got wet.  We played well into the dark when the frisbee became completely impossible to see.  At that point though it was too hard to play ultimate and so we started playing 500, which is much better suited for darkness since not being able to see makes the scramble much more frantic.  This, ladies and gentlemen, was more fun than Groove.  Good thing, too, because there was no snag to all the fun we had.

Classes are getting harder.  Chemistry is the easiest by far because I already understand everything that is being taught while other kids are more confused than they've probably ever been in their lives.  Again, this is me attempting to be cocky.  Calculus is, as expected, quite difficult.  I'm struggling to keep up with some of the stuff that goes on even in class, and it's all because I'm rusty.  That gap year did not bode well for me as far as remembering how to integrate goes.  So I'm not doing well.  But I'm seeking help.  Engineering is my favorite class right now, because the professor is quite well-spoken and makes sense of all the aspects of code that I could not wrap my head around in my sophomore year.  Learning that certain parts of a code are not just formalities really helps one understand the process of creating and deconstructing algorithms in code much easier.  A story about this class: I understand where the name "Trance music" gets its name.  I turned it on in iTunes, switched over to Linux (yep, I'm one of those guys now) and started to code.  An hour and a half later I finished my entire program in an out-of-character period of being incredibly focused on what I was doing (i.e. trance).  And I managed to not pick up my phone when somebody called, nor respond to any of the IMs that were sent to me.  Cool story, bro.

And in response to what I mentioned at the beginning of this post about having no idea what I'm doing or if I have any sort of direction in what random activities I select in college, I've joined the College of Engineering's literary magazine (which is all about the fact that its an unusual combination of disciplines).  I mostly joined it because it's called "Blueprint" which is the best name ever.  Also, I'm attempting to get involved with the Michigan Electronic Dance Music Association (MEDMA).  They are one of the most prominent student organizations on campus, and as a result they are often the ones responsible for the music at the larger frat parties and most campus events.  Sometimes they make limo trips to Detroit to spin at nightclubs too.   The wristband that you get from being a due paid member gets you into any frat party being DJ'd by MEDMA, front of the line, no questions asked.  Which is one of the bigger perks.  Also you can get free DJing lessons, which is cool.  My friend who shall be known as Mario Kart Kid brought up his incredibly cool program that he has used to make amazing teknobeetz with the intention of joining forces with me to create even more amazing teknobeetz and getting word out about it through MEDMA.  Also, they host music swaps every so often (which is enough reason to join, if you ask me).   I've also been presented with the option of joining NorthCoast Academy Percussion Ensemble... more on that later.

College

It begins.

Being the pessimist that I am, I'll begin with some of things that I was promised by the University of Michigan that I never actually received:

1. Reasonably small classes.  I knew they would be big, since this is a huge University, but I was told that in spite of this the classes weren't obnoxiously large.  For some perspective, my Engineering 101 course contains anywhere from 150-200 people and my organic chemistry class has well over 300, and its in the largest lecture hall on campus.  The only class where size control is evident is Calculus II, where there are about 35 students.  Good job.
2. Communal bathrooms - that is, communal bathrooms with soap.
3. Fast, reliable bus service - my previous experiences at the University of Michigan were at Campus Day when I was still on the fence about attending here vs. the Colorado School of Mines and Summer Orientation.  In both cases, (even when campus day occurred during the spring term) the free bus system - in particular the route between the central campus (where most everything important is) and north campus (where I live) - took about five minutes with absolutely no wait time between buses.  I learned the hard way that this is only the case during the middle of the day on weekdays when classes are in session.  And by "the hard way" I mean that I waited for two hours to catch a bus from central to north on my very first day on campus.  Granted, that was my own fault.*

However, none of these are very large complaints.  I did manage to find one soap dispenser in our hall's bathroom - it's just not in a very sensible location.  The expectations I had for college life were generally accurate, since I have spent so much time in the past year worrying about what my experience will be like.  On the other hand, there are a few points on which my expectations for the school year were either surpassed or not met.  Chances are it is far too early to comment on either but I'll give it a go.

Expectations met:

• Food.  It's not very good, but not intolerable.  And Bursley's dining hall is pretty cool.  And sitting in this dining hall also made me appreciate morning classes a lot more for reasons that must not be shared as publicly as on a blog.  Contact me privately if you want to hear this tale.
• My dorm room.  I'm pretty sure it's actually smaller than most on campus even though I was told it was one of the larger dorms.  Having one of the only dorms with wi-fi in my room, though, is a huge plus.  I'll refrain from judging my roommate here, but let's just say that I'm talking about him in the right section.  He seems like a cool guy but I don't think we're going to be bffs.
• Partying.  Let's face it, I've never thought that partying would be that fun.  Now that I've officially taken the plunge and "lived it up" at a few frats, I see that I was right.  Throw in a guy who keeps trying to pick a fight with me and the fact that men sometimes very publicly take advantage of drunk women at these things, and you've got a nervous freshman too uncomfortable for alcohol to fix.  Cue trek back up North.

Expectations exceeded:

• Classes.  I've been told over and over again that college courses (in particular Calc II and Organic) are horribly difficult.  However, organic chemistry thus far is so damn easy that I'm struggling to stay awake.  Right now we are reviewing general chemistry.  Keep in mind that I took three years of high school chemistry, including a semester of high school organic chemistry.  Unfortunately, though, I'm aware the pace will pick up greatly.  Also, Calculus is a lot easier than I expected - more than a year after having last looked at anything that even remotely related to calculus, I have a better understanding of the lectures thus far than a fair amount of my classmates.  Also also, Engineering 101 deals a lot with C++ which I have experience with.  However, I never learned it well enough for this experience to be as beneficial as my other two courses.
• Football.  Lately all I've heard about Michigan football is that we haven't been that good.  Also, my seats are in the 92nd row of the student section.  Nonetheless, I can see the action on the field perfectly well from there, and our latest victory over U Conn proves to me that we have got some game.  Let's see how we stack up against Notre Dame tomorrow...  My only complaint is that the marching band is too far away to judge accurately. (The sights/sound do not line up at all due to the proximity problem, which makes judging the precision of their music/marching a lot more difficult.)

Expectations not met:

• Transportation.  See earlier rant.
• Social life.  I don't want to talk about it, really, but for this past week I've spoken about 1/3 of what I normally would.  I'm really, really fucking lonely.  And it's making me painstakingly aware of the fact that I probably have a mood or personality disorder.  And it's making me even more afraid that it's getting worse, whatever it is. 

Soon the end of this post will become a dumping ground for stories as I come of age.  Or something.   

The two weeks in which plants vanished, Pt. 3

So I end up in Vegas.  To be honest, I wish the memories here were still fresh, because a lot of the time there was a lot of conflicting thoughts on the subject.  I'm opposed to the city on principle, seeing as how they've pretty much annihilated the aquifer underneath the city in the span of a few years, and yet they continue to waste tremendous amounts of water.  Pretty soon they'll need to completely truck all their water in, or they'll build a massive pipeline and get all their water from some poor other state.  The city of Las Vegas is just a giant waste.  I guess that's why they call it Sin City.  Oh well.  I know some cool people from here, so I guess it's not all that bad. 

Anyway, my first observation of the place, as unbelievable as it seems, is that it's hot.  Very hot.  Being outside was pretty difficult task.  Also, a less noted observation is that it smells really bad.  The city smells awful.  Outside it literally smells like garbage and semen.  Inside any given casino there is a ton of cigarette smoke poorly masked by even more perfume.  Also, I'm sorry if I'm coming across as bitter about the trip, because I'm not.  It's just the casinos that I have a beef with.  You see, I can't gamble, because I'm not 21.  I begrudgingly accepted this long before coming.  However, I also discovered that you can't even stand around in a casino if you aren't 21.  You literally have to keep walking around.  I couldn't even watch my parents gamble.  Which meant that I got to spend some quality time in... malls.  And sometimes the hotel room.  Not fun.  Another complaint: everybody on the Strip is really creepy.  From the dudes advertising their peep shows or whatever-things that dealt with boobs flicking their cards at you, to 6'7" black men walking around dressed up as Wonder Woman, Vegas is... uncomfortable.

That pretty much covers it for the shit stuff.  I saw two shows, one of which was Cirque du Soleil - essentially a bunch of gymnasts on crack, which was spectacular - and the other Penn & Teller, a duo of comedy magicians.  Who were crazy and a little demented, but also spectacular.  One of their tricks involved revealing how the sawing-a-woman-in-half trick worked, only to accidentally send the blade through the exposed midsection and send blood and guts flying everywhere.  I think that pretty much sums it up.

Also, I visited Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, Zion National Park, and, of course, the Grand Canyon.  Describing these won't do them any justice, so I'll upload some pictures of each later.  Each was spectacular, although I think the best from a spectator's perspective was Zion National Park.  The Grand Canyon is actually not all that pretty (the Colorado River was running completely muddy brown at the time, for example) although it is perhaps the scariest thing you'll ever see in your life standing at the top. 

The two weeks in which plants vanished, Pt. 2

The journey continued with my Summer Orientation at the University of Michigan.  An early morning drive from Portage to Ann Arbor lead me to a sub-par continental breakfast in the most maze-like residence hall I've encountered.  The thing that was most impressive about the Orientation program was that it was almost completely student-run, aside from a few presentations by campus police where safety was concerned and various professors/spokespersons when we discussed academics.

The first day included a presentation on campus safety and transportation (basically preparing you to go around campus immediately before you did), a short and pretty worthless tour of Central Campus, and some placement exams.  I had taken the math exam online earlier - here I took Chemistry and French.  I got credit for Chemistry, and managed to get two semesters of French credit (since language isn't a requirement for Engineering students).  Anyway, one interesting part of the tour was the beginning of the all-important graduation tradition which involves walking through a fountain in the middle of campus away from the fancy graduate library just so that we can walk through it again upon graduating in the opposite direction - toward the graduate library - to symbolize the fact that we're graduating.  Get it?  Any U-M students reading this (doubtful), forgive me for being a freshman and finding this interesting.

Later on, we broke up into groups and basically did icebreaker-type things with other freshmen at Orientation.  And it was all related to questions we had about college.  Which wasn't very interesting at all.
This was followed by a performance by an educational theater troupe on campus that managed to be both entertaining and informative.  Bravo, guys!  I think I liked it most because it touched only lightly upon the interpersonal issues that get too much attention and focused much more on issues that one may encounter with oneself - that is, discovering what you and I want to study, how to find some sense of purpose in the giant system that is college, and how to use what you learn to find success in life.  All thought-provoking shit.  Which is exactly what I need to think about.  After that they gave us free movie tickets to see either the critical/indie darling Winter's Bone or the cringe-comedy Cyrus, starring Jonah Hill and John C. Reilly.  Even though I was more interested in Winter's Bone based on the reviews I'd read, everybody wanted to go see the comedy, so I went to see Cyrus.  It was fucking hilarious.  But nobody else thought so!  The point of the movie was to find humor in situations that are just uncomfortable as fuck rather than the ridiculous dialogue/slapstick that one would expect from a movie with John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill, which I guess a lot of people didn't get.  I was seriously busting a gut throughout.  My only complaint would be that the ending got way too serious, but I think that that was only because the tension between the two main characters that was the source of all the humor in the movie inevitably had to be resolved.  Oh well.  Other notable happenings on this day involved a brief walk around campus with my friend who I shall call Obamakid, in which I felt bad after failing to pay a homeless man but giving some kid $2 for bus fare.  In my defense, though, the homeless guy was panhandling in a tunnel.  That's a place where you don't give people money for fear of getting jumped, regardless of who asks you.  Also, that night, I realized that the dorms are holy-shit hot in the summer.

Day 2 was definitely a bit more interesting for me just because it separated the groups based on the school they were attending within the university, which meant I got to learn about Engineering.  The day began in the same fashion as the first, with a presentation that covered the very basics of finding academic success.  Basically, an hour and a half of "don't cheat on tests" and "get good sleep".  Then, we traveled to the Undergraduate Library and learned about the University's library system, computer services (a presentation which, to my surprise/chagrin, didn't deal with the horrifyingly complex "Wolverine Access", but only with things like wi-fi (which I believe is an unalienable right to all students regardless of location), computer repair, illegal downloading, etc.), and how to get involved with the University's many different student organizations.  It would have been more useful if it had helped me learn which ones I ought to join, but alas, it didn't.

The pace of things picked up when we traveled to North Campus for Academic Advising, which thankfully focused on Engineering students.  After learning all about engineering on campus (and I'm officially intimidated), I met individually with an academic adviser and learned specifically which courses I'd need to take to meet graduation requirements.  The trip involved eating at the dorm which supposedly serves the best food on campus - which I think only owns its title because of the fact that it serves by far the largest amount/variety of food.  Qualitatively it's not outstanding. 

After this the night was basically my own.  Other students involved with Learning Communities got there own private meeting while I reviewed some of the many materials given to me and finished a survey that was essentially just a detailed university census.  Then, we went into the basement of the labyrinth-dorm and constructed our schedules.  This is what it looks like:

It's a pretty good schedule, I think, save for two things:

1. The Chem 210 discussion section on Monday should be Thursday from noon to one.  This is an available section but it was booked at the time.  I'll be attending this session anyway, so that I can get three afternoons in a row where I'm completely free after 1.
2. I wanted to tack on a first-year seminar just for fun, but since my Orientation was so late in the summer, they were all booked.  Which sucked.  There was a philosophy course called "The Paradoxes of Time Travel" that was basically meant for me.  Alas...

The question still remains as to whether or not I am taking the right math course.  Math 116 is Calc II, which anybody who does well on the AP Calculus AB should be placed in.  I did well on it, except in my junior year.  This past year I took Statistics as my math credit, and as a result, don't remember how to do Calculus in the slightest.  Well maybe a little.  But not much.  If this ends up being balls-hard I'm going to be fucked.

After I finished with this, I started showcasing some of the funny videos on my Tumblr feed (which is a joke, by the way, don't even go looking for it) and managed to come up with the winning name for our Orientation group of engineers: "Euclids on the Block".  Not even an original name, but awesome.  It came from this comic:

After this, I had a conversation with three awesome Asian kids about everything from rock bands to lucid dreaming to literature for several hours.  Then I hung out in some kids dorm with a bunch of other kids where we discussed politics, of all things.  I thought my mostly-left political views would be embraced on the most liberal non-liberal-arts campus in the state, but I don't really think that that was the case here.  Shit, I'm a Commie.  Awkward...

Day 3 was literally just waking up, traveling to North Campus, getting my schedule approved, and then going home.  Construction was terrible on the way back and I ended up in a massive traffic jam that was caused both by the construction, and people rubbernecking a car crash.  Pretty dumb.

Anyway, the University of Michigan contains less trees than the middle of the woods in backwater-town USA from part one.  The number of trees is really the only thing linking my various excursions over these two weeks, which is my explanation for the title.  Anyway, my last stop in this three-part post is Las Vegas, Nevada, of all places.  I'll finish this later.

Like, Inception... and stuff

Massive spoilers.  If you haven't seen it yet, you should.

On the most unrelated note you can possibly think of, I had a stroke of genius moments ago that allowed me to be the only person to understand the point of the Christopher Nolan movie Inception.  Yes, I've seen it.  Yes, I've seen it twice.  It's the event movie of the summer, after all, and I'm an event movie kind of guy.  I saw Avatar twice in theaters after my original review.  Anyway, the movie ends on a note - spoiler alert, btw - that the reality of the characters is not completely certain.  Like in the beginning of dream sequences in the movie, the viewer is left questioning whether or not the vision on screen is a character's dream - and how long the character has been experiencing that dream.  Arguments about what actually occurs in the movie from this point onward, are irrelevant.  The point of the movie, as is the case with the characters in the film, is to instill an idea that questions the firmness of the reality that we know for the characters, although we're smart enough to know that what we experience is all real.  But the idea, as is stated in the film, takes root (mostly because it's a good movie) and leaves you thinking about it just for a little while.  And by taking root as it does, it enters your subconscious.  I just woke up from a nap involving a dream that basically occurred in the exact same fashion as the movie Inception.  I know that dreams tend to be much more absurd than the events of inception, so as the movie entered my subconscious my dreams became more rationalized and once things started getting freaky (my grandmother getting run over by a canoe) I realized that I was dreaming and that I had woken up.  It's only after you wake up that you begin to realize the strangeness of the dream... right?  Basically what I'm getting at is that the movie gives you a certain way of thinking that causes you to dream as the dreamers in the movie do, which is the most fucking genius marketing campaign I've ever seen, which is how it's remained on top of the box office for so long and for all of its repeat viewings.  And when you look at the different analyses of the movie on IMDb forums and the like, you realize that Chris Nolan has created one of the most multilayered movies in... possibly ever.  I underestimated this already fantastic movie.  By now it's got to be facing the "it's popular so it must suck" backlash already that plagued Avatar and even Twilight (the first movie wasn't half bad, actually, aside from some pacing/dialogue problems and the fact that the source material lacks a plot until the last seventy pages or so), but even with that I proclaim that it'll be a crime if this movie isn't nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award (especially with ten nominees)... and it will win Best Original Screenplay.  And it has a good shot at Best Director.  I don't know about Sound Editing (Tires squealing in a rainstorm?  I don't think so) but it'll definitely win Sound Mixing.  It will get nominated for VF/X but not win.  I will stick with this for now (but it doesn't look like there'll be a bigger action movie to usurp its position for any of the sound or visual categories so I'm confident with these.  I don't see any acting nods though.  Whatever.  This is mostly just food for thought.  Upon having reflected upon many of the subtle details introduced into the plot with short bits of dialogue such as the "leap of faith" thing (which Cobb makes at the end when he finally sees his kids and accepts them as real), among others, I can safely say that this movie has escaped the event horizon of "fake smart" movies (Butterfly Effect, fuck you).  This is a ingenious and incredibly well-put-together movie and it's a crime if you don't see it.   And I'm sorry it's so incoherent.  I needed to write this down fast.

The two weeks in which plants vanished, Pt. 1

It began, you know, two weeks ago, when me and my sister travelled up North to my grandparent's "cottage" along the bank of the Pere Marquette river.  By cottage, I mean permanent trailer-home in the middle of nowhere.  But it makes me sound more wealthy to call it a cottage.  Second home?  Oh well. 

This brief weekend excursion involved the following notable items and activities:

• A old green leather chair belonging to my grandfather which used to be kept inside but had deteriorated with age.  It now sits outside, exposed to the weather.  Being as sturdy as it is, it hasn't managed to fall apart completely in the past year - however, the back leather panel has peeled away and revealed rotting wooden frame while mold grows on the leather flap.  The footrest has fallen off and has been replaced with a moldy hunk of thick plywood.  In many places the leather has torn and yellow stuffing is being squeezed out along the seams (and in one case a hold I poked with a letter opener when I was nine). There may possibly be a bee's nest inside of the chair.  It is the comfiest chair in the entire house.  And my grandfather still sits in it.  
• I finally knocked the movie "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" off my list in the earlier post, "The Movies".  I am kicking ass at this list and I'm seeing a lot of very good movies.  Other unrelated examples of great films I've seen recently are "The Truman Show" and "Life as a House".  
• Floated down the river in an inflatable tube.  At the end of the last leg I was hit in the ass with something.  Hard.  I thought it was a fish, and a bunch of other stuff kept popping up in the water.  It took me a full 10 seconds of being pelted with these things to realize that I was being attacked by water balloons by incredibly stealthy neighbors.  It was a little sad.
• Explored the woods.  Climbed up to the top of a small ridge with my sister who was very angry at me for doing so spontaneously without proper climbing shoes.  
• Tried to light a fire using incredibly wet wood.  It worked, somewhat.  But I let it die after realizing that I'd spent an hour trying to move past the "large stick" phase.  That sucked.  However, to my own scouting credit, I did only use one match and no lighter fluid or other fuel of any kind besides the grease left over in an old pizza box.  And one benefit of the slow-burning effect of the wet wood was that it created a small area of extremely hot coals that made the most optimal marshmallow roasting conditions you'll ever see in your life.  I got it about as brown as possible without the thing falling off or catching on fire.  Seriously.  I brag about this because you will never see it done better.
• Ate the pizza in that pizza box.  It was delicious.
• Experienced riding in the backseat while my sister drove on a public - sparsely populated, but still populated, mind you - road.  She's a year away from taking driver's training and this was her first time driving.  Jesus Hernandez Christ.  I've never been more terrified in my life.  Driving on the wrong side of the road zooming at 35 mph around tight corners on a dirt road is now something I can say I've experienced, and folks, it is not fun.  It is downright terrifying.  However, I can say that on this drive I saw at least 30 deer.
• Began reading Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five
• Began reading and finished a book called So You Want to Write, for obvious reasons.  I want to write.  And I told myself that I was going to do it and I started to do it.  But progress is something I'm not great at making when it comes to these things.  So I said that I'd attempt to get into a first-year writing seminar at U of M when I got my built my schedule at orientation, which happened the day after I got back home from this little adventure.  More on that later...

Summer Love

Since the beginning of summer it's been a long steady climb toward not sucking. Until recently.  But nothing can derail me from attending college so regardless of what obstacles arise, I am essentially unstoppable.

The Good:

• I found a far superior guide to self-improvement written by Anonymous.  Amazing that it didn't circulate its way around to me sooner.  Here's the link.
• I finally got some time spent with T-Rad after he was forced on more important adventures.  We saw the Last Airbender (terrible fucking movie, not even good to make fun of since every sentence in the movie is just exposition) and played RE4 and watched The Lost Skeleton and did a bunch of other shit like drive all the way to Parchment and back and eat at Denny's.
• Went to DCI Kalamazoo with a sweet girl, who shall be referred to as... something.  Nothing really merits a distinct nickname yet.  Anyway, it was an awesome time.  Easily the best drum corps event I've attended (other than World Championship Finals, of course) and she seemed to enjoy herself as well.
• Bought Kid A, and finally understand why people are so obsessed with Radiohead.  Absolutely fantastic album.
• Made lots of good on the list I made in "The Movies", and Grizzly Man and Almost Famous are probably now two of my favorite movies ever.  
• I can now officially say that I've done chatroulette with two other guys, in speedos.
• Went to some kids awesome lake house in Delton and fucked shit up.  Seriously, the kid has his own lake.  Freaking boss.  I went kayaking, did flips off of a floating dock, made waves, perfected the art of the body kayak, and, most importantly, played a download-only game for the PS3 called "Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars", which may be the best game ever made.  It's soccer.  With cars.
• Found a partner to attend the August 25th Coheed & Cambria/Porcupine Tree concert in Grand Rapids.  It's only fitting that it was this kid (known as No Problem) because he provided me tickets to see Obama at his own special graduation ceremony.  (I am so jealous, by the way.)

The Bad:

• Awkward dissolution of friendships continues as I don't see any friends for long periods of time.  I am also afraid of having a party at my own house despite the fact that I like my house and that everybody is urging me to.  
• Still haven't been invited to go/gone out to the beach with any friends.  I went out there once to pick up my dad after he rode the Kal-Haven trail  with my Colorado-dwelling uncle (if you couldn't figure it out intuitively, people who live in the mountains are insanely good at biking) and saw a bunch of friends who had gone together.  How much more awkward does it get?
• I realized people I trusted don't trust me enough to tell me anything I couldn't figure out by intuition.  This is intentionally vague.
• Experienced a gross invasion of privacy and breach of confidentiality on Formspring.  Also intentionally vague.
• I'm completely lethargic and never feel like bothering to do anything.  However, that's just a psychological thing.  Probably the result of me seeking refuge from the bad through apathy.  Not that I know anything about how that works.  

I honestly can't tell you a point in posting this.  I've been too lazy to bother with posting anything else, maybe?  Once the last two sections of "The Bad" blow over I'll post about them, assuming they don't get - wait for it... ugly.  Also, I was hoping to post some movie reviews after I see Inception, just because I anticipate that being good.

1/4"

I just finished book #3 in a year!  Jesus Christ, this looks even more pathetic despite the fact that it's actually becoming gradually less pathetic (and I am exaggerating because I exclude books for school and one that was short enough that I read it in one sitting)  Anyway, the book was House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski.

Be forewarned if you decide to read this book: it is an incredibly confusing novel.  The bulk of the book centers itself around a man named Will Navidson, who in the fictional universe of this novel, took the above Pulitzer-Prize winning photo of a Sudanese girl he named Delial who died soon after the photo was taken.  He and his claustrophobic wife, Karen, buy a house in some ambiguous location in Virginia that somehow ends up being slightly larger on the inside than it is on the outside.  Initially it is 1/4" larger, but this measurement increases slightly the more Navidson and his wheelchair-confined friend Billy Reston and his brother Tom try to find a way to measure the house and eliminate this "spatial rape".  Well, as happens with all quasi-horror plots, the house is actually really fucked up.  Not necessarily haunted, but weird as balls.  Rooms expand and contract in small increments unnoticed, doors appear in different places, and eventually, a completely dark, silent, featureless, and cold hallway appears behind one of the doors that appears to extend beyond the boundaries of the outer wall of his house.  Navidson has the spirit of an adventurer and is determined to see what is beyond that door, while his wife is much more concerned with her own safety and the safety of their two children, Chad and Daisy.  So they hire an initially reluctant but later intrigued group of professional climbers/explorers and such to document what the hell is going on in this weird house.  And basically (spoiler alert!), it's a big, scary labyrinth.

This is strictly the first layer of House of Leaves - this is an imaginary film called The Navidson Record, and we are reading an extremely intellectual, pretentious analysis/summary/documentary about the film that Navidson made and the slew of sub-films and essays that followed.  Because, you know, it's pretty weird, even for fictional characters.  The dude who wrote it is named Zampanò, and he's blind.  Which raises a whole lot of questions as to why he wrote about a film.  Or did he make up the film?  I don't know.  Anyway, after the guy dies, the third layer of the novel imposes itself on us - a lost soul by the name of Johnny Truant.  He had a rough childhood in foster care as his father died unexpectedly and his mother was institutionalized when he was young, and ends up as an apprentice at a tattoo parlor and in love with a stripper he names Thumper when the story begins.  Then he finds The Navidson Record and starts to lose his mind as he attempts to piece together the confusing jumble of notes left for him by Zampanò.  He sometimes interjects into the story with lengthy footnotes that explain some day-to-day experiences that reflect his failing grip on reality as he progresses through the many layers and labyrinthine structure of The Navidson Record.

So basically, this is not a book for people prone to migraines.  This is a damn confusing book.  The recurring theme of the labyrinth is often reflected by the format of the words on the pages themselves.  Often, the book delves into a series of footnotes upon footnotes, often occupying several pages of text - these contain innumerable references to sources that are occasionally fictional and that occasionally exist in reality.  Other times the main text is rearranged to reflect the events of the story - sometimes stretching, sometimes condensed into one corner, sometimes twisting and arcing and sometimes even written so that it can only be read in a mirror.  It's absurd and clever at the same time.  A personal highlight actually came in one of the appendices - Truant's mother writes him a series of letters from her mental institution that disturbingly details her descent into madness in a way that basically reflects the events of The Navidson Record.  Even through the spatial rape and abyssal blackness of the house and creeping monsters in the dark, this proved to be the most unsettling for me.  Oh well, I guess I'm just weird.  

If your house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, you just might be a redneck.

The Complete Collection of Things I Kinda Want to Do

• Open a breakfast joint.   This will NEVER happen, but at any given time, I crave breakfast food as much as John Goodman does each morning.
• Make a movie.  Specifically, a spoof movie that is actually good so that I can run Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer out of  business.  Although I am flexible.
• Write science fiction.  I read my first Michael Crichton novel when I was in fourth grade and I read so much god damn sci-fi until high school.  My tremendous childhood imagination completely died along with my good reading habits, unfortunately, so this one will be difficult to accomplish.  Also, I'm not incredibly good at writing due to the fact that writing is so subjective and criticism is never concrete when it comes to these things.  
• Write anything.  Writing is stress relief.  I'm interested in writing screenplays, maybe, since previous writing experience (if attempting NaNoWriMo counts) has taught me that I'm good at dialogue.
• Learn to appreciate running.  Running is good for you.  People learn to appreciate running if they do it enough.  But unfortunately, in real life, running is fucking terrible and feels fucking terrible.
• Start playing video games again.  Another nerdy habit of mine that died in high school.  Non-gamers, of course, could never understand why I don't think video games are worthless or a waste of time and money, but I'll try to explain it in as few words as possible: video games are something of an art.  The design process that goes into the environments should definitely make them qualify for that status.  But the easiest way of explaining it is that they provide the audio-visual experience of a movie with a complete score, with the pick-up-and-go quality of a book (as well as length) and an added interactive quality that only a game can provide.  The only real argument against it, in my mind, are that almost all games have plots as complex or interesting as your average episode of Family Guy.  Either way, they are a damn fun way to pass time.
• Compose an epic-length piece for a full symphony orchestra just so that I can conduct it flawlessly and hear it played flawlessly just so that I can soak in 15-30 seconds of uninhibited, deafening applause at the end.
• Produce an album of non-classical music.  More than likely rock music.  I love rock music, but I don't play any rock instruments (never really learned to play a kit, and never became very interested in that instrument specifically).  Betcha can't guess what comes next...
• Learn to play the guitar.  Similar aspirations have been held by many a 10-45 year old male, but I think that a guitar is a damn cool instrument.  I'd prefer to learn to play the Chapman Stick first (just because that may be the coolest type of guitar ever invented ever), but really anything would satisfy me.
• Travel.  You know that saying, "It's not the destination that counts, it's the journey," or something along those lines?  I am the living embodiment of this quote.  I love to travel, but only for the sake of traveling.  One of the most unforgettable parts of my Philmont adventure in 2008 was, honestly, the train ride there and back.  Train is the absolute best method of transportation in existence.  Where to travel, though?
• Visit: Egypt, the Canadian Yukon, California, New Delhi, anywhere in Western Europe, Moscow, Japan, Rio de Janeiro (or anywhere in Brazil), Beijing, Istanbul, Machu Picchu, The Himalayas, New Zealand, and Hawaii.
• Live in either Britain or Scandinavia.  I have roots in Scotland and have a very British name, so I ought to at least be in touch with them, right?  Plus, generally British people have sexy accents (and yes, I spent a lot of time looking up a bunch of the regional accents in England and Scotland because I'm weird) and apparently they feel the same way about American accents.  Which I have.  Also, despite my aversion to foreign languages (due to my inability to learn to speak them), I would gladly choose to live anywhere in Scandinavia (preferably Norway) due to the fact that this is the most beautiful tumor-shaped region of the planet.  Ever.  Seriously, Norway is ridiculously gorgeous.
• Restart high school.  Before you say WTF MAN, let me explain myself.  I mean this only because I am aware of a lot of things I should have done differently.  Also, it would give me the opportunity to actually look closer to my age at any given point.  I think college will teach me that all that stuff that happened is completely inconsequential, but I am still upset - weeks later - at how high school ended.  
• Gain the ability to throw my consciousness back and forth through time so that I could prevent myself from ever making stupid decisions that turn out badly (see: post on Time Travel).
• Get really good at dancing and acquire the ability to seduce every women on any given dance floor with my mad skillz.
• Regain some degree of the semi-developed artistic ability that I had in 6th grade. (This only includes painting/sketching because there is a highly misshapen clay turtle on my mom's dresser that would argue against the idea of me being able to make art.)  Then, on a train ride or something boring and still, I want to draw someone onto a page completely unnoticed and then give it to them as they leave.  
• I've always wanted to blow up something while walking away from it, like in the movies.  I would look so badass.
• Buy a sailboat and spend the rest of my life sailing on that sailboat.  I met a guy who lived on his boat in the summer and it seriously got me thinking about the idea.  There are opportunities to make money and all.  In a movie there was a segment about three ski bums who bought a sailboat and lived out of it for three years just sailing around and skiing mountains on Northern Europe's Arctic Sea coastline.  It was eye-opening.
• Be good at sports.  I've never been good at any (and not from lack of practice or even athleticism, really) and that made me feel pretty useless up until other extracurricular opportunities cropped up in high school.  It sucks that before high school, the only things that kids can really do outside of school is sports. 
• LEARN HOW TO COOK.  Boy interested in chemistry can't make food for the life of him.  It's pathetic, and I'm going to need a very stereotypical 1960's housewife if I'm going to live happily, otherwise.
• Get addicted to a new TV show of a similar "epic" factor to Lost, although I don't know if that exists.  That reminds me, I was supposed to make a Lost post regarding my interpretation/opinion of the finale, but now it's far too late... not cool.  Anyway, suggestions?  Fringe?  Mad Men?  Breaking Bad?  I'm already obliged to pick up shows that are already done with.  Which basically just means I need to watch The Wire.  Or maybe I'll just start watching a new show.
  

I bet you can't guess the subject!

Relationships.

Specifically, how they involve more than two people.

It doesn't take much thought for you to understand why I've been scrutinizing this topic obsessively for the past month or two - see: Finishing High School Pt. 2.  I've spent a lot of time trying to analyze exactly where I fucked up with the innumerable doomed relationships that have come and passed in the last four years.  Perhaps it's out of a need to solidify a surefire method of meeting the right people in college?  Maybe an unconscious urge to tie up any loose ends with the people I'll be leaving in a few months?  Who knows?  Anyway, in light of a recent series of events, I've decided to lay out what I know (strictly for my own purposes [so be prepared for a boring post]) about relationships and use that as a building block from which I can try to formulate some hypotheses regarding, you know, why I suck at stable relationships.

Basically, there are three types of loving relationships that really matter in the world: familial, romantic, and "friendly" (for lack of thesaurus access).  I've got the familial relationships nailed.  My family is pretty awesome, and I have no major strife with anybody in my family.  Regarding romantic relationships, I've been pretty unsuccessful, but that's mostly because I rarely take interest in anybody besides one or two crushes at a time, who coincidentally tend to dislike me.  Also, evidence has shown that I am pretty terrible at being involved with them (although I think that now that I'm older and hopefully wiser any future romantic endeavors will be less me-shitting-all-over-myself and more I-hath-slain-the-mighty-beast or some other fucking awesome one-liner).  Friendships are my least successful area to date, since I currently have very little to show regarding close friendships.

This is all common knowledge.  The reason why I feel that it is important to bring this up is because the difficulty with all of these relationships lies in the fact that they aren't even true relationships, when examined from a distance.  Familial relationships are the obvious example for this: brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, grandparents, sons, daughters, aunts and uncles are all involved with each other, and in this way, a relationship between, for example, two brothers, cannot be fully examined without acknowledging parental influences, among others.  And contained within a family tree are a significant number of romantic relationships, as well as friendships.

However, since I am not in the stage of life where starting a family of my own is my priority, I have to deal the much deeper and more intricate complexities of high school/college-type social paradigms. Social networking is responsible for a sort of new plane of relationship complication - the fact that nothing is private, for one, and also the fact that most people are connected to people with whom none of these basic relationships are shared.  Some of my Facebook friends are people who I may have had a class with in my sophomore year to whom I never spoke.  Others are people I have never even met, but have only heard of.  People such as these gain have access to all the details regarding the statuses of one's own relationship.  Gossip Girl isn't far off.  For an example, look no further than Choch from my earlier post: Why I am Michael Cera in every movie ever.  I don't even know the kid, but he dashed any potential for the formation of what I will vouch for as the single most important romantic relationship of my life thus far.  Whether or not this was facilitated by the use of Facebook is questionable, since again, I don't know the kid, but it seems like that's the only way in which word of my actions would have circulated around the entire class that quickly.  Another phenomenon resulting from the internet's open floodgate of communication is what I will call "perceived anonymity."  Under the guise of anonymity, in any circumstance, people will become completely uninhibited in their actions and statements because there is little fear of consequence.  It's a sort of justifiable deindividuation, (thank you, AP Psych!), because a person can completely alter his/her behavior based on the fact that no one will ever uncover the person's identity.  This is so commonplace on the internet that, believe it or not, the phenomenon will carry over into other non-anonymous communication platforms.  As in Facebook. 

The event that is drawing my interest (and is really the trigger that set me off on the ramble you're almost done with) is a break-up between a good friend who I respect and a not-so-good friend who I also respect and still find sympathetic despite not being friends with her.  Brief background: Couple was good.  Similar in personality and mannerisms.  I have no idea what caused the break-up, but the point is that I have essentially the same impressions of both individuals: both are good people at heart for the same exact reasons.  But does that prevent personal attacks from flying?  No fucking way.  And the reason why this story is important is because, as far as I know, the only post-breakup insults that are flying are not even between the people in question.  They involve outsiders, who have decided to choose sides in an otherwise (seemingly) uncomplicated, not excessively dramatic (as in remorse but not regret on the part of the dumper, sadness but not absurd sadness on the part of the dumpee) breakup.  Presumably because of the safety they feel because of the internet's magical identity-protecting powers.  Should people really be allowed to choose sides in such a matter?  No.  The one time I ever was emotionally attached to someone else's breakup resulted in the agonizing, unwanted dissolution of a great friendship.  So this is a stance I'm comfortable taking.

Perhaps it's a result of my current hatred of the complications of who-knows-who and who-is-attached-to-who, but I will never understand why people will ever feel the need to get involved in affairs such as these when it doesn't concern them.  The only reason that makes any damn sense is that they, unlike me, feel obligated to rush to the defense of the person of preference, whether or not the following backlash against the other is justified.  This makes me wonder if I am wrong about the whole taking-sides business.  Did I just get the shit-covered end of the stick right from the get-go?  There is no question that relationships, especially when facilitated by new technology, are not a matter that concerns only the individuals involved with a specific, single relationship.  I just need to find out for myself whether or not that is a good thing.

Things I've done this summer

To be updated with (hopefully) every new development.

• Watched Gossip Girl
• Watched LOST (again) with Jeremy
• Attended Kalamazoo Central's Graduation Ceremony with President Obama
• Was jealous that I didn't graduate from KC
• Swam
• Played DDR
• Played Minesweeper for three hours straight
• Lifted Weights
• Played tennis with my ol' Pa
• Attended many graduation parties
• Run into people who I never want to see again

If you are one of the people with whom I agreed to go camping, write a musical or movie, or hang out, you are currently failing at your job.  This whole "I've got plans already" business gets old when it happens every day for two weeks.

Finishing High School, Pt. 2 (Warning: Bitchfest ahead)

I knew it would fucking happen.

I knew I would come to some shitty revelation about how I've lived my life over the past four years, even though I thought I had it nailed.  Maybe this just tells me, ultimately, that I am normal.  Because I'm a teenager, and teenagers think they know everything when in reality they don't know jack shit.

So where do I begin?  I've pretty successfully determined for myself that high school itself is mostly a daycare center for teenagers, except with guns.  I've sort of found my little niche in the vast expanse of maturing consciences (which is music, if you couldn't figure it out).  But I never understood the social construct.  Never.  And to be honest, I shouldn't have expected to.  I've been an awkward little kid ever since fourth grade, when I discovered what it was like to not have any friends. (This was when I moved to Portage, for the record.  It's a lot harder to adapt to that sort of shit as a nine-year-old than as a teenager.)  There were points when I appeared to have overcome complete social debilitation, but since I'm graduating with nobody to call a real "partner" (be it a girlfriend, best friend, or even an incredibly close friend), I'm settling on the side of "I never really figured out how to make friends and keep them."  And I was fine with that.  I figured that the blame for that rested entirely on my circumstances - the people I was with.  I wasn't meant to be paired with any one of them, but with someone else.  You wonder where I became so attached to the idea of soulmates?  It would be high school.  Also, Disney.

Anyway, I am horrifyingly wrong.  Right now, everyone I know is paired off with someone.  Not even necessarily with a romantic partner, but with an extremely close best friend.  Either way, it's the sort of relationship that I've always wanted.  The few that aren't, like myself, are completely lost.  There's not really anything that encapsulates the pain of not knowing where you belong in the world, and when you don't have anyone to share your life with, there is no sense of belonging.  I am the expert on loneliness, believe me.  This much is true. 

But the reason why it is wrong for me to believe that there is someone out there for me - literally waiting for me to walk into their life as I wait for them to walk into mine - is because everyone else I know has found someone.  I am not really special, so why should I be an exception?  Everyone else seems to have found someone even though none of them are perfect for each other (although to the cool loser like myself they certainly would appear to be perfect for each other).  The reason why this hasn't happened to me, as far as I can tell, is because, as a person, I spread myself much too thin.  Looking back, I realize that there are way too many people who think of me as a sort of gross caricature of a person.  A weird person, mind you, but not really anything with that many complexities.  Generally exuberant in person, but not necessarily happy.  Easily stressed.  Alternately makes witty jokes, idiotic comments and serious conversation.  The reason why this is as it is is because I hate drama.  The general social group from which I can choose friends are extremely dramatic.  But I can't hate them, because they're the only people I've got.  And I don't hate them.  Individually, everybody I consider my friend is magnificent.  But they also hate each other.  Petty disputes tear apart friendships left and right, including some of my own.

It raises the question as to why their lives are better than mine.  (If you just said, "No, Nigel.  Shut the fuck up, your life is better," please understand that my interpretation as to the quality of life is synonymous with one's happiness.  If you didn't notice, I'm not happy.  The last time I was truly happy was the month after I got back from tour.  So shut up and finish reading.)  It's because I'm flawed.  Very flawed.  That's not say that my revelation is that I'm flawed, because anyone who didn't think so in the first place is an asshole.  What I mean is that, while people, including myself, are generally satisfied with the person I am as can be described by my personality and résumé, I've been approaching the way in which I find friends the wrong way.  For eighteen long, long years.  The problem is with my way of thinking.

So I changed it.  I know now that you really do get to choose the people in your life.  I know that it's better to not be afraid of people not liking you, because you don't really need people to like you if they aren't willing to be with you when you need them.  I was really weak, and I was too scared of fucking up potential friendships to bother to try to get anyone to really understand me, or even to try to understand anyone individually.  It's clear to me that doing so would have allowed me to find someone who would make me happy.  And for that, I'm incredibly sorry.  I'm sorry to whoever could have been a kick-ass pal of mine for the last four years.  I'm sorry to any girl who would have loved me, and who I would have loved back.  I'm sorry I've regretted so damn much, if you want some irony with that shake.

I really fucked this up.  Sorry about the whinefest.

Finishing High School, Pt. 1

I once believed that Senioritis was a completely manufactured ailment.  Last night, I didn't even start my homework until approximately 1:00 a.m.  I've discovered the joys of formspring.me and it's kept me up into the wee hours of the morning each night this week.  Needless to say, Senioritis is a completely real and especially dangerous illness.

In completely unrelated news, the primary concern of late has been nonrecognition.  You'll have to understand that I attend a school for academic elite.  For many, this is a source of over-inflated egos.  And with over-inflated egos comes desperation for recognition.  I understand this, and I think that my understanding makes it a little less painful to watch most of my accomplishments in high school (which aren't accomplishments as much as they are things that I worked my ass off to finish) go unrecognized.  I've never gotten recognition for anything until this point so I'm grateful that I'm getting medals and such. Things I've gotten in the past month: $30 from the regional chapter of the American Chemical Society from placing in the top 16 on the Competitive Exam in Southwest Michigan (I could have done better last year and gotten more money, but oh well) and a Merck Index; all the things I mentioned for band, a medal (and $12,000) from the National Merit Scholarship, some "platinum" cord for maintaining a GPA of 4.0+ through high school.  These will be followed by a gigantic medal from KAMSC and a diploma from PC, and hopefully I'll get my eagle before I turn 18.  Needless to say, I'm incredibly happy with my current circumstances, academically. Especially since I have about four days of school left. 

There are some people, though, who can't handle the feelings of inadequacy that plague everyone who's ever attended a KAMSC awards ceremony.  Or really any awards ceremony for that matter.  I know people who skipped KAMSC's awards ceremony because they were afraid of being humiliated (even though they ended up winning considerably more than most).  I know another person who ripped up another senior's expensive research project board out of anger that the student won a ton of awards.  And on a more personal level, I felt ripped off at PC's thing, since I know I can kick the shit out of anyone who won a science award (they exclude KAMSC people from these), and they basically skipped over the National Merit Scholarship, the only thing I was really "recognized" for.  So even I'm the victim of ego inflation.  Damn.

If humility is a virtue, then we are all terrible people, redeemed only by the fact that almost everybody actually deserves to be recognized if they worked hard in high school, rather than just float on a cloud of natural intelligence - basically, what I did this last year.  I really do think, though, that the very-smart-but-not-top-tier students should get recognized more, because everybody wants recognition.  When you're excluded from normal school for being too smart and from awesome school for not being smart enough, it can damage your self-esteem a bit.  For obvious reasons, more on this topic will come after graduation.

Eagling and Extras

Last weekend, I carried out my long-overdue eagle project.  Yes, I am a boy scout.  Somewhat redeemed by the fact that I actually intend to become an eagle scout.  The demographics of the scouting activity in America follows a sort of trough of normalcy.  Everybody does Cub Scouts, so that's when it's at its peak level of "normal."  Then, all the "cool" kids quit and in the middle school days boy scouts ends up being a gathering of sort of odd, socially inept youths.  I was one of them.  But then once you get into the older days of boyhood some of the kids attain the rank of eagle, and these are usually the best people you can know.  Because the whole "Eagle" thing basically says that you are of a certain caliber in life.  That's why everybody who gets it is so proud of it, and why everybody shows respect for them.  That's my justification for that.  Plus the high adventures are really fun.  One of the best times of my  life was spent at Philmont Scout Ranch in Cimmaron, New Mexico.

Anyway, yeah, last weekend I did my project, which was removing garlic mustard from Bishop's Bog Preserve in my city.  I had lots of trouble getting it approved for no comprehensible reason.  The people in charge of my approval were obsessed with details - the only truly valid point they made was regarding how I would feed my volunteers. So basically, I just rambled more about everything (less concisely) and they agreed that it was much better.  I'm over it.

So the last possible date that I could conceivably do the project was the Saturday, May 8th.  It was about 45 degrees, wet, windy, and frigid.  I was so afraid that people wouldn't show up, even though I invited about 90 people.  Luckily I managed to acquire 20, even though I never had more than 15 at any given point in the day.  We also didn't remove as much (in terms of acreage) as I had initially envisioned, but that's because it takes so long to remove the plant - it grows in huge, dense swaths in the woods.  However, I'm not complaining about it, because we filled 88 gigantic bags full of weeds by the end of the day.  This is a lot.  I'm very thankful for everyone who helped me achieve my goal.  Now I just have to write up my project, get a few recommendation letters, get a bunch of approval signatures, and finally acquire two extra merit badges before I can meet a Review Board and hopefully join the coveted rank of Eagle. (For the record, merit badges are the bane of my existence and also the reason why a lot of kids quit Boy Scouts.  They are the biggest waste of time and effort imaginable.  So don't judge me by them.)

In unrelated news, this week also marked my final experience in my school's band and in Legends Indoor Ensemble.  (I still will call it "Legends Brass and Percussion Ensemble" though, because renaming something "Indoor" is one of the things I will never agree with.  Winter Legends?  Maybe.  There are winter drumlines.  But there aren't any "indoor drumlines")  Each year the seniors inherit a letter of the alphabet and dress up according to a theme that begins with that letter.  In 2007, the theme was Z for "zombies".  In 2008, the theme was A for "AARP" and everybody dressed as old people.  It was quite clever.  In 2009, the theme was B for "bums".  This year we had the letter C, and we decided to use a "circus" theme.  Turns out it was a fantastic theme.  I wore a Tyvec suit built for a person who is 7 feet tall (XXXXL, I shit you not), a big elastic belt, a far-too-small blue ski helmet with a red star on it, and a superheroesque black cape with a larger red star on it.  I was the human cannonball.  It was awesome.  Some other costumes included three clowns, a strong man, a few magicians, fortune tellers, a ringleader, a lion tamer, a creepy balloon-animal-guy, a bearded lady, and a mime.  There are more, I know it, but I can't remember them right now.  Anyway, I played timpani for one piece called "Instinctive Travels" by Michael Markowski.  It was okay.  The stage we played on wasn't our own, so it sounded odd and I screwed up a little bit as a result.  After that, Legends played.  It wasn't a great performance, percussion-wise.  Whatever.  I was sort of expecting that.  It was a pretty mediocre concert.  Oh well.

The next day we had our band banquet.  The seniors were supposed to do a rainbow with their shirt colors.  I was supposed to be yellow.  There isn't a fucking yellow shirt on this god damned Earth.  So instead, I wore the tackiest shirt possible. (Nevermind the fact that I look like I'm about 11 years old)

Anyway, yeah, I managed to make the rainbow really awkward and broken.  But I wore this one for the sole sake of being able to ACCOMMODATE ALL THE COLORS BECAUSE I'M SPECIAL.

I was recognized for three things that night, two of which I was expecting.

1. Being a senior (expected)
2. Being in a leadership position (expected)
3. Being an "outstanding senior musician" (what?)

Usually they give that last award to the same people each year, which does not include me in my class.  So I guess I feel special.  Our director explained that it was because he liked that I was one of the only people to stick with the band program even with KAMSC conflicts (which are many, considering that band and KAMSC occur at the same time), which he wrote into a recommendation letter I had asked him to send at one point.  It was a touching moment.

Overall, it was a decent week.  I'm happy to be blogging again, however uninteresting the content/reflection is.  I spent most of April and the early portion of this month pretty damn depressed (for reasons that aren't worth sharing until they're completely in the past) and it's good to know be able to find a place to semi-address it in a way that isn't a complete emotional exhibition.