I can really taste the beans in this coffee. It's very beany.

Conflict

Do I stay up and continue writing my paper about the role of the Fool in Shakespeare's King Lear and how Laurence Olivier's film production reinforces elements my understanding of it? Or do I go to bed and get up early and do it?

I'm going to miss my girlfriend and some friends here, but I really can't wait until school is over and done with and I can leave.

Gold

I hate PC

The song, as well as how I feel.

Clint, booze, aftershave

Peter, you suck

Rapping

I'm sitting at my desk at 3:15 again when I should be in bed sleeping because I have three classes tomorrow but instead I'm reading the idiot board and listening to Sam Adams on YouTube and thinking how the roommate is starting to piss me off again. We were ok almost for nearly a week but I think I just don't like his presence. He's taken to informing me when he's about to engage in certain activities that require me to stay out of the room for some time, which is just kinda weird I think, and he texted me today (4/20 OMG!!!) saying "we r gonna burn if thats cool". Oh, so you're telling me you're going to smoke in the room and that I can't do anything about it because you've invited two freshman girls who otherwise would have no interest in you to join? OK roommate, I'll let you have your day with these girls standing on your top bunk. Have fun.

Some of my friends on the floor are working on a rap song to the beat of Sam Adams' "I Hate College." I was considering writing a part of it but I think it would end up either ridiculing the school more than they intended or as a full on verbal assault of the roommate. It sounds pretty good and is funny because it's a bunch of rich white kids rapping about getting girls and getting drunk and getting drunk girls. I'll put it up if they post it to YouTube.

Conversation

Connor

need a title for my paper

3:11amDennis

my dog skip

3:12amConnor

it's about a poem called rorschach, wher a shrink uses ink blobs to help a pacient talk about his life and how it sucks

3:12amDennis

macauley culkin and the nazi zombie: how two pop culture icons led duke to basketball glory

3:13amConnor

hahahah are you drunk

seriously

i need help

3:13amDennis

ok

who's it by

thatd be a good title though

Other titles suggested:
"Interpretations"
"Interpret this"
"Analyze That"
"A Man Stands Alone"

I don't want to go back to school. I don't care about the classes. I don't like my roommate. I don't trust anyone there other than three people, two of whom I rarely see. I don't think I like people. I like a few specific persons, but people I could do without.

An old picture

Dogs

Happiness is only the first hour after the alleviation of some especially intense misery.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald "The Beautiful and Damned"

College 2

I just watched two kids sitting on a bed next to each other with a trashcan between them and their heads in the trashcan as they violently vomited. If that's not friendship I'm not sure what is. I should have taken a picture but they probably wouldn't have liked it. I also just caught my roommates leg as he went to "pretend" kick me and then kicked out his other leg from under him, causing him to fall real hard. I feel kinda bad about that, I'm not sure why I did it.

Tiger got to hunt,

Bird got to fly;

Man got to sit and wonder, "Why, why, why?"

Tiger got to sleep,

Bird got to land;

Man got to tell himself he understand.

-Kurt Vonnegut "Cat's Cradle"

The River

I had this song on my old Ipod but then got a new one and couldn't find the CD's for my dad's Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band three disc set and life hasn't been the same since, the regular album version just doesn't cut it and the intro is worth the price of admission by itself. I know there's no price of admission since it's a Youtube video and free but you know what I mean.

I think Red Wing Bay is my River.

Little German Soldiers

In the Town Forest in Needham there's a little train set that this guy Jim built over ten years ago. My friends and I tried to find it one night last summer, first attempting to pinpoint where we thought it could be using a map of the forest and following the waterways to where we hoped the little waterfall would be. Equipped with baseball bats and flashlights, we ventured off into the forest. After an hour of following the little birdhouses that Jim placed along the trails and painstakingly copying down the numbers on the bottom of them, we gave up our expedition and returned to our cars covered in bug bites, swearing we'd once again attempt to find the train set.

Today I had an estimate with an older man who lives on Robinwood Ave in Needham, with a backyard that abuts the Town Forest. I noticed a gravel path from the end of his backyard into the woods, and saw that he had several illustrations of trains and railroad tracks in his home. I had a slight suspicion of who he was, and when I saw the picture of him and his wife crouching next to a miniature railroad set in the middle of the woods I knew that I had found Jim. I told him how my friends and I had once searched for his creation and had marveled at the little birdhouses, and he talked to me for fifteen minutes about his tracks and his birdhouses and his experiences with people who had found his train set, ranging from a couple of police officers to a crazy lady whose barking dog hates "train sets in the woods and men with hats." I could tell that Jim was very proud of the little world he created, and that he was enjoying telling me all about it, and I think I played the role of enthralled listener quite well, largely because I really was one. Though he didn't sign the contract on the spot and he might not go with my services, he told me to let him know when I found the railroad set and that he would turn it on and run it for me once I did. Oh, and all those numbers that we so carefully recorded and pored over, searching for a clue as to which way to go? They were completely random, merely serial numbers that Jim painted on his birdhouses so that he could keep track of them.

If I'm ever going to be okay, I'll have to earn it.

-Markus Zusac "I am the Messenger"

a la Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan: "Earn this."

Pictures are pretty cool

I wrote a post earlier about how pictures were overrated and can't always take the place of words. I didn't want to admit it then because I thought it would take away from my argument in defense of words, but pictures alone can be pretty righteous too. I think that while a picture can capture the emotion of an event, it can't be fully understood what is happening unless there are words accompanying it. Some pictures don't need words though, which is something I hesitated to acknowledge in the earlier post. I guess they each can stand alone without the other, but they also complement each other very nicely. For instance, I saw a crow bathing itself in a big puddle today. The picture alone would've been pretty cool if I had a camera with me, but the fact that the puddle was due to intense rains and some vicious flooding makes the image even cooler, at least for me.

I think that getting the camera for the girlfriend and helping her learn how to use it and taking pictures with it with her have made me appreciate and think about things as pictures more than I previously did or would allow myself to. I'm excited to have money in the summer and be able to buy my own camera. At the moment I'm thinking either a Nikon N80 or a Nikon FM10. I got the N80 for the girlfriend and have an ebook guide thing for it saved on my computer, so getting that would make sense because it's a bit cheaper and I already have a guide, but the FM10 is tempting too. I guess I'll worry about it more when the summer comes along, until then I barely have enough money to take my lady to dinner more than once. She's a real cool girl. I think that the camera has helped us see more creative sides of each other than we normally would have. She likes taking pictures of people (mostly me), while I take more pictures of things or of the few animals we see on campus. I'm not sure what that means about us, if it means anything at all.