everything is fine

Good news always follows the terrible news. At this point, I really am not interested in anything else. I'll wake up tomorrow and it'll be the best day ever. And the day after that will be the best day ever. And it'll continue like that forever. And now, after all the gloom, things are looking up for our plucky hero.

I am exhausted. This weekend did not turn out the way I had hoped or expected, and I didn't even expect that much. The whole thing just seemed to be a long, drawn out ordeal that was over before I even realized it started. I would rather have been miserable in class than do the whole weekend over again. I have never really understood periods. Specifically, I have never quite understood how a girl can not realize it's her "time of the month" when "that time of the month" features blood coming out of her vagina. That just boggles my mind. But it's my time of the month. I can't help being moody sometimes. I try not to give in to mood swings, but everybody is entitled to a little emotional wonkiness every once in a while. These past couple of days, though, I feel like there's some kind of seething bitterness welling up inside of me. And I'm doing everything I can to hold it in, but it's leaking out at the seams. This unbelievable n...

My legs are just too tired to do anything properly anymore. Also, my shoulders. But it's the first weekend of the semester, and that's good news. All I want to do is hang out, play some music, hang out, and relax. I'm looking forward to the next couple of days. There is so much to do, though. Lots of drawing and reading. But I'm not worried. Nothing worries me anymore!

I knew exactly what I was getting into when I signed up for a class called Ballroom Dancing , but it didn't hit me until I was actually standing in the classroom. What it essentially boiled down to was that ballroom dancing combined two of my absolute least favorite things in a bi-weekly, hour-long session: dancing and social interaction. Every Tuesday and Thursday for an hour I have to not only meet and make small talk with complete strangers but also dance with them. And then I have to remember names and faces and details and all kinds of terrible things so that I don't constantly ask them what their names are. And I can't fake it, either. Girls don't respond well when you refer to them as "dude" or "man." I think the fact that it forces me to step so far out of my comfort zone is largely why I signed up for the course in the first place. It's good for me, or so I'm sure I will be told at some point. I also signed up for it because I'...

I definitely didn't plan for it to happen. I only wanted to get something to eat. I just happened to look outside at the right time. There was a bright flash, a pause, and the loudest roll of thunder I've heard in my time at UT. So I stepped out of line and went for a walk. I love to walk through the rain. It's cold. Brisk. Refreshing. And you're guaranteed to be alone. And so I walked through campus with my hands in my pockets and the rain falling on my head. I got to think about things, which is either something I don't do enough or something I do way too much. I can't find the middle ground there. But I think my problem is that I expect too much from people. People don't think like I do. And they don't do things that I do. And I forget that. I expect them to and when they don't I feel jaded until I remind myself of the facts. I guess I'm just selfish and moody. Something to work on. I needed the walk. And at the end of it, I t...

All things considered, it was a good trip. It was nice to reconnect with old friends and meet new people. And, though it might have been a complete clusterfuck, caving was fun. Caving is always fun. Being outside was the best part, though. A miniature vacation right before classes start? Quality time in pleasant parts of nature for free? Great food with no effort? It's a hell of a way to start off a new year. I've never eaten so much food before. I desperately need to brush up on my Spanish. While it was nice to get blood flowing to that part of my brain, it was a decidedly unsexy demonstration of my lingual ability. A crippling embarrassment. But these things happen, I suppose. It shouldn't be too hard to pick back up again. It hasn't been that long. It'll be like picking up clarinet again. Or riding a bike. I am very much not ready for classes to start up again. All I want to do is hang out, meet people, and buy a Batman poster. I think that sound...

Well, I'm all moved in. And I really went all out this year. My dorm room is decorated with things from my bedroom . It's, you know, something. Except that I have a picture frame with no picture in it. I just don't have any pictures worth framing right now. Maybe that will change? We'll see what happens. I'm starting my junior year in college. Shit. I don't think I'm ready for classes to start again. I mean, I barely got a summer. I was in class. No rest for the weary, I guess. And tomorrow I'm leaving on a geology school orientation-type trip. It's for the freshmen to meet each other and their advisers and some school-mates. It's going to be interesting. I'm good with kids. But these kids are my age, and I'm not good with people my age. So they're not really kids. I don't really even know all that much about geology. "Look guys, this is a rock. It's kind of rock-colored. Let's go climb on those ...

Houston was an incredible disappointment. My driving was off, I wasn't feeling great, we sort of got lost, I was tired, and after we finally got to the place, it sucked. It was a giant kid's center. It was not at all what I imagined and it was awful. There wasn't any cool Star Wars stuff. An hour later we turned around and went home. An entire day and a lot of money wasted. Something always goes critically wrong with my plans. PLUCKY HERO suffers 15 damage to LIFE ENTHUSIASM. PLUCKY HERO has acquired LVL. 23 PESSIMISM. Live and learn, I guess. Today's lesson is to never go to Houston under any circumstances. And that acting on nerdy impulse leads to disappointment. And that Ashley has better directional intuition than me. Life is terrible.

I've been on kind of a music playing binge these last couple of days. Playing all the songs I can remember on all the instruments that I can for as long as I can. I had a couple conversations with a couple of people about music and life and other things and they both really hit home. Like a punch in the gut. Or a split reed on a lip. Or something that sticks with you for a while. Not the best feeling. Life's going by pretty quickly now, and I'm still spinning in circles trying to do everything I want. Scattered. Too interested in everything. I've got to sit down and figure out what I actually can do with the time I've got left because time is not a luxury I really have. Which is also not the best feeling. There are just too many things out there I want to be into. It's not fair that I can't do all of them, I think. I'm afraid that if I let music become a side thing for me that I'm going to end up dropping it almost entirely. Actually, it...

She's right.

My name is Gabe and I am a compulsive liar. I tell lies before I even finish registering what was said to me and before I start to think of a legitimate response. It's not something that I mean to do, it's just something that happens outside of my conscious control. I don't mean badly, it's just that words tend to fall out of my mouth in ways that sound reasonable and believable but are complete falsehoods. I am totally innocent here and cannot be held responsible for the things I say when I'm not telling the truth. Everything after this statement is true. I am going to stop lying all the time! Might be impossible! PLUCKY HERO has acquired LVL. 1 HONESTY!

After a certain point you can't just call it stage fright. Use it or lose it, they say. And I am in the middle of losing it. And it is a bad feeling. That's what I get for looking and thinking for so long and not actually doing. Not playing. Like I should be. What kind of musician doesn't play his instruments? Maybe that's what threw me off. Preoccupied. Bothered. Mental conflict between the things I love. Something has to change. I've got to justify keeping those horns around. Or I've got to get rid of them.

So Comics Fight is over. What. An. Experience. It's. Been.

"Do you know about the flood?" I pushed the newspaper into my bag and looked at him. "I'm sorry, what?" He stepped closer. "I asked if you knew about the flood." I looked around. "What flood?" " The flood." He said. He pointed to a shell in the limestone wall in front of us. "See this shell? This shell got here during a flood. All these shells in all these walls got into the rocks during a big flood. A flood that covered up a lot of land." Images and information flooded my mind like a slideshow on fast forward. Shells, rock, limestone, water, sea, millions of years. Deposition, sediment, cementation, calcification. "Really?" I said. "There are sea shells on top of Mt. Everest." He said. "Wow." I said. And so we talked. We talked about religion. He told me about how he'd had a religious/spiritual awakening twelve years ago where, after an entire life of religious bel...

She was smaller than I was used to, but in a way it was better. She was shorter, tighter. Not what I was used to. But she moved the way I wanted her to when I wanted her to. Moved with me. And after all the bouncing and rocking, I stepped back and looked her over. There was still work to do--problems to work out. I wiped the sweat from my brow and I knew that I had made a good decision. It was just one of those things that you knew was a good idea. You don't always feel so comfortable so quickly. Something to be thankful for, I guess. I locked her up on the post and walked inside. It was a good first test ride on the bike. I have a new dancing partner. A friend asked me to draw a comic for a shirt. And this is that comic. I'm kind of tired.

So Comics Fight is underway, which is super exciting. It's a lot of work and coordination, but it's worth it. Although, I'm not entirely sure why we made a Facebook event group for it the day before it started. If we wanted to make sure we had an audience, we should've made it sooner. But, I am not complaining all that much. The whole thing is pretty cool, and it's good practice for the Whodunnit? Murder Mystery Dinner that we're hoping to put our characters through in the fall. Also, doing a big fight between comics (a la Civil War!) means we get to do tie-in comics. Just like real comic artists! I've been thinking these last couple of days and I'm afraid that I'm going to waste my life running around in circles trying to do everything and never really doing anything. Jack-of-all-trades, master of none . Somebody has to ask the hard questions. But, in important news, this is my 200th blog post. That's 200 posts full of absolutely nothi...

Rock climbing was a blast. I had almost forgotten how much fun it was. It's so much different when you're actually out there and not just climbing up a wall in a gym. When you've got the sun beating down on you as you reach your hand up blindly to grab at a ledge that isn't there. When you slip and fall out into the air knowing that the knot in the rope you tied is the only thing keeping you from falling on the rocks under you. It's a thrill. Not knowing if you'll make it up that last ledge. I need to get into it more. Some of my friends want to meet her. "We have to meet her, you know." "Why?" I say. "Because that's just how things go. You know that. We have to approve." "But it's been however long it's been. Can't you just assume that it's not bad?" "No," they say. "We have to meet her." And after thinking very carefully about all of it, I don't have any proble...

I met up with a couple of old friends tonight. And a new friend. A few friends. The one thing that has always bothered me was the handshake. I know what a handshake is. I'd like to think that I give out pretty reasonable handshakes. But everybody seems to have a different idea of what a handshake is. You grab hands and shake them. This is what you do for people that you have just recently met or are only acquainted with or if you are feeling like being a little formal with your buddies. I understand that when it's good buddies you do the bro-shake and grab thumbs and optionally go in for the shoulder pat. This is, however, reserved exclusively for good buddies. Not for people that you don't know very well. You cannot be somebody's bro if you have only just met them. The rules of etiquette here are very simple. So I cannot for the life of me understand why people go for the bro-shake when you clearly are not good buddies. It makes the entire thing awkward be...

It's kind of funny. The less sleep I get, the more comfortable I feel, the more honest I get. I tell people all kinds of things that I wouldn't normally. But then again, I'm not sure I can say what is normal because I am rarely well rested. I'm not sure where my mind is taking me. Somewhere, I guess. I'm just glad everything got worked out. Honestly, I was worried there for a while. Communication problems can really do amazing things. It was like playing a twisted game of telephone. Everybody had a different message to share and everybody thought everybody was somebody else. If that makes sense. Guessing at someone's thoughts is always disastrous. And people are so inconsistent. People surprise you like that. You think you have someone pegged and then all of a sudden you roll over and they are somebody totally different. Opposite. I think we're not so unalike. "It's not going to magically solve everything, and I think that's exact...

School is creeping up very quickly and I am very much less than ready for it even though technically I am already in school and have been for the entire summer. I am, however, ready for Comics Fight . Which we are trying to plan out. It's going to be badass.

And things are looking up for our plucky hero. Also, I'm so unbelievably exhausted.

Good things are temperamental and never last. Bad things, too. All things, actually. That's a belief I hold as true. Is that depressing? I guess. It's definitely not cheery. It's not really depressing either. It just... is. Good things take work that not everybody is capable of doing or keeping up. And even if you do manage to keep the whole thing going, it tends to slip through your fingers when you aren't looking. Like sand. I guess good things are like sand. A lot of it everywhere, but you can't ever really hold on to it. Maybe the sun boiled my brain a little bit. People just don't understand each other. Oh well. Deal with good things on a day-to-day basis, I guess.

I am so tired and I have a headache my head is going to explode I'm going to forget something tomorrow I just know it I'm already forgetting something I haven't even started packing yet there's still so much left to do God shit fuck I have to wake up early and finish taking care of all this stuff why can't going to the beach be something that's also relaxing in theory. Tomorrow: the ocean. Tonight: head explodey.

A good friend of mine sold me his old mountain bike. Now I have a bike! Things are looking up for our plucky hero. Speaking of plucky heroes, my hand is unbelievably tired. I am never going to do something like this in one sitting again. Somebody please, tell me I don't have to draw another comic until Monday.

Sometimes--a lot of times--I forget what day it is and then I look at my calendar and it's Tuesday and I still haven't touched my lab report. Not so good. I'm still trying to improve my art. It's a slow going process, but with more studying and more practice, it'll pay off. I can already see some improvement! I did this for the Texan: Just kidding.

I really want to go to the aquarium now. Also, I want a boat when I go to the ocean so I can mess around in a boat.

I stood and watched as she flipped through the pages lazily. Pages of doodles with class notes inserted sparingly between them. All dwarfed by the blank pages. Notebooks full of these pages. She mentioned something about sketches and it was at that moment that it dawned on me. I am a cartoonist without a sketchbook . I mean, sure, I doodle and sketch things in my actual notebooks or on random pieces of paper in my room but I've never had a notebook--a sketchbook--to put all of them in exclusively. And so I got one. Well, I already had one, but it was empty. I thumbed through the pages to make sure. I gathered my drawing utensils and cleared away some clutter from my desk. My drawing desk which has apparently been repurposed as a "dump all of your shit on top of it in haphazardly constructed piles so that you can't use it or find anything on it" desk. I flipped open to the first page and put my pencil to the paper. And suddenly I didn't have anything to d...

A friend of mine asked me if it would be weird to attend her wedding in four or five years. I didn't have to think very long to respond. In fact, as soon as I saw the word wedding I started to panic a little. Growing up is such a scary prospect. And I know I've talked about it already--it just bothers me that much. And I know there's nothing to be done about it except go along with it as best you can. We are all growing up and some people just aren't very good at coping with it. Four or five years is not a very long time. High school was a blur that, in hindsight, felt more like a month than four years. I've been playing clarinet for over eight years, but that doesn't seem so long. So four or five years is going to be here tomorrow, and I will still not be ready for it. Weddings are just weird. It's strange when it's composed of people you don't know, it's strange when it's people you do know, and it's insane when it's peopl...

Planning for big things is hard. There are always little details you forget or little details that people don't tell you until the last minute. Or details that people nag you about. Or details people rub in your face until you plan around them the way they want. Or they just don't tell you at all and get mad later. Or they tell you and make you mad and don't realize it. If there's one thing I've learned when it comes to making big plans with big groups of people it's that in the planning stage, everybody will get angsty. There will be some infighting, some resentment, and some group tension. Then, as the trip progresses, the tempers go down into a resigned bitterness that simmers until the end of the trip when it explodes in a tempest of passive-aggressive acts that leave everybody drained and angry. Which is, of course, my favorite part of the whole thing.

In all honesty, I am not much of a party person. I'll go, but I have a hard time being sociable. I'm the guy who stands off to the side and nurses his drink. Or I'm the guy sitting in the chair looking around. Or I'm the guy standing in the middle of the crowd smiling and looking around while nursing his drink. They're fun, sure. For a while. I guess I am just not a lively person. But we started planning out our mega crossover epic. Which is going to be amazing. Ambitious? Yes. Insanely difficult to pull off? Also yes. But it's a challenge, and challenges are fun. And if we can actually do the whole thing, it'll make history. Well, when we do the whole thing.

I'm excited about going to the beach. Too bad it's still a week away.

Today was a good day. We got to jam. And it was a string of three or four songs that we just pulled out of the air in all kinds of styles. It felt good. I soloed on clarinet for one of them. That felt good. I haven't been able to really do any real improvisation like that in such a long time. And despite all the squeaks and fumbles, well, I don't even know how to describe the feeling. Well, maybe I could take a shot at it. It was bliss. It's funny how easily those things will come back to you. Then we goofed around and pulled out as many covers as we could. From Jason Mraz to Sixpence None the Richer to poorly constructed originals, we were an unstoppable wave of musical fun. Playing music is so therapeutic. There's a feeling you get when you play with other musicians and you all click. Everything just works. Everybody feels everyone else and there's this vibe that goes through the room. It's such an incredible feeling, this musical synchronicity...

Next week will feature family scandal, almost a dozen murders, a drowned girlfriend, and lots of manic depression, yet it's not in any way based on Hamlet. That was my horoscope when I read The Onion today. Makes me a little worried about going to the beach. But today was a better day. I got fan mail for ben the box boy ! I mean, sure, I've gotten compliment comments on Facebook and whatnot, but it's different when it's over e-mail. It's like it really means something. They must have really liked it to actually sit down and write an e-mail about it instead of just mashing buttons on Facebook--something people spend too much time of their day doing. It's exciting stuff. Everything just went well today. And, hopefully, more of the same is in store for tomorrow. Feels good man.

It's hard to keep your head screwed on straight.

I've been feeling edgy lately. Like I'm teetering on the dividing line between acceptable and splodey . I feel pent up. Like a dog left in a kennel for too long. Or a cat that's being forced to take a bath. Just generally grumpy. Or touchy. Malicious, even. I just want to break stuff. I decided that this steadily building rancor would be best exorcised with a trip to the gym. I brought a change of clothes with me to my appointment so that I could get on the punching bag afterward. I was looking forward to it. It was time to let off some steam. After the appointment was through, I headed over and got changed and then realized that I had forgotten my shoes. I decided that I didn't need them and walked over to the gym in my flip flops and found out it was closed. It figures.

I was glad to hear from him--it was the first time in over a week. A long, bad week. He typed out short sentences when we spoke. "Hard problem. Bright people working on it." "We heard the conflicting reports." I said. "Both wrong." He said. "Everyone's got an agenda." The best lesson my dad ever taught me was to be cynical. To be distrust what you hear. To stay on your toes when it came to the world. And to assume the worst in people--because most of the time you'd assume correctly. Or, of course, you might be surprised when you were wrong. But when does that happen?

Well, it wasn't the trip I was expecting, but then again I have high standards. It was fun, even though it was brief and largely uneventful. I had hoped it would be physically demanding to the point of absolute exhaustion, but what can you do when there are no caves and the water is hot enough to make coffee with? Oh well. It was a nice couple of days and it let me forget about things. It's not enough, though.

I found myself at a traffic light the other day, watching the other drivers and waiting for my light to change. As I did, a man in no shirt drove by in a sedan. It was the most awkward thing I've seen while driving, I think. I never knew how strange it looked when people drove around shirtless. It looks like they might be naked. It's just awkward. And I'm a guy who drives shirtless on occasion. I've found that my worst ideas tend to be the ones I think about. Because I have time to consider all the aspects of them before convincing myself that they are good. My impulse decisions, which are also bad, are somehow less bad than those that I stew on for a while. A friend of mine told me that I seemed like a person who could pull off having shaved legs. I don't think of myself as a particularly hairy person, but I tend to worry about being considered a hairy person. And so his statement stuck in my mind for a long couple of weeks. Ultimately, it came down to t...

By the end of the summer session, the bus driver and I were on pretty friendly terms. When we got to my stop he would turn and say, "Alright then, brother. You take care now." And as I stepped off the bus I would turn and say, "Thanks a lot, man. You have a good one." And as he closed the doors he would say, "Will do. You stay out of the sun now, you hear?" And right before the double doors squeaked shut I would say, "Will do." For a large number of nights spread out thickly over a large number of years I've watched my reflection in the glass of the front door as I made my final stalk down the hallway from the kitchen to the stairs. By the end of the hallway my posture would be fixed and, fully upright, I'd stride confidently around the banister and dart up the stairs in my ill-fitting pajama pants hanging off my hips. My reflection was always the same: a slim, cutting figure that betrayed tales of Peter Parker-like flexibility a...

Little things set me off. Little things get under my skin. And I can switch gears in about 0.001 seconds from happy-go-lucky to furious. The whole hidden violent temper thing runs in my family. Both my dad and my mom have hidden violent tempers that often are not very well hidden. So you can imagine that, when mom + dad = me , the same applied to mom's temper + dad's temper. I'm usually pretty good about not getting my feathers ruffled though. I've learned to just bottle all of that up and then eventually casually toss the bottle out to sea so that some poor castaway can find it on his uncharted island. "Went all the way to worldpool cave!" it said, scrawled across the top of my news feed. I commented simply, "whirlpool, fool" and thought nothing of it. It was good that someone had gotten into caving. I went about my day doing the normal things I do, whatever that may actually be. I came back later. "Who cares if I spelled it wrong?...

Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if I were more confidently candid when I interacted with people. Or even when I wrote. By sometimes, I mean often. I think it would be a bad idea.

Last night I played a terrifyingly stressful campaign of Left 4 Dead in which I was the last survivor battling impossible odds to make it to safety. It was all very dramatic and I was shaking by the end of the whole thing which is somewhat pathetic, considering that it is just a video game. Nevertheless, I went to sleep soon after my harrowing experience with undeath. I dreamed about zombies. It was a terrifying dream. I had broken my ankle and I was trying to out-limp the massive mob of shambling zombies that were chasing me down a deserted city street. I had no weapon and no companions. Just a broken ankle and the constant moaning of the zombies, a reminder that I was only delaying the inevitable. I limped and cried for help and their hands reached out to grab me and I woke up. And I heard it. An eerie wail drifted through my window. A lone woman's voice--or what had used to be a woman--wavering in the late night. They were coming. I lay frozen in my bed for a moment ...

I took a day to myself. Let everything else go up in smoke. All of the day's plans. Poof . And I read. I read all day. I read at my desk. I read on the hammock. On the rocking chair. On the couch. On the floor. I just read books all day. Alice in Wonderland and World War Z and Casino Royale and started remaking a list of books I still hadn't read. And it was spectacular. I remember when I was a little kid and I spent all my free time reading books. Putting off homework to read a book by that month's favorite author. Putting off everything. And just reading for the sake of reading. For days. Spending an entire day reading a book instead of sitting at the computer. It's funny how things change like that. But mostly depressing. I need to read more. Make time for reading. Instead of messing around on the internet, I should be getting into a book. That's more productive. And rewarding. And I miss doing it.

The best thing about playing sports is when you limp away from the field. It doesn't really matter whether you win or lose, it's just the feeling of accomplishment. You did something with your time and have the scrapes to prove it. Feels good man. And ultimate frisbee is a sport.

Today, I was somebody's shoulder. Tomorrow? Who knows.

I consider myself a man of science. I try to approach problems and deal with them logically, using observations previously recorded to handle new problems. So of course my interest was piqued when someone I knew posited that men are needier and more complicated than women. An interesting theory. But to properly examine it, one must understand the concept of sexual selection and its two aspects: male competition and female choice. Which brings us to point one: men are needier [in relationships] than women. This is true. In a natural/primal setting, the males are generally love-'em-leave-'em kinds of guys. Their main objective is to reproduce as much as they can. Humans, in their infinite wisdom, have decreased the emphasis on this to the point where it has become a footnote in male purpose. Civilization dictates that, instead of finding a partner for the sole purpose of reproduction, males find females for life companionship. With the effective removal of their natur...

I really hate Starbucks coffee.

Trying to surprise somebody is an exercise that usually fails. There are just too many variables in the mix that usually play out not in your favor. Something always goes wrong. Surprises get spoiled. They figure it out or something doesn't quite go according to plan or it doesn't have the impact that you thought it would. And then, when it's all said and done, you come away from the whole experience a little disappointed and discouraged. Most of the time. But when it works, it's great. Watching the gears turn in their heads while they piece everything together and then watching their eyes go wide in a slurry of confused responses makes it worth it. The big plans never work out. It's all about the subtlety.

I actually like cooking quite a bit. I jump at opportunities to cook for myself. Or for other people. My heart skips a beat sometimes. It's an art, really. Chopping, dicing, mixing, spreading, baking, grilling. All those wonderful kitchen verbs. And the sounds. Sizzle, pop, bubble, crackle. It's a satisfying experience. I want to cook more.

"Hey, did you go to Westlake?" She asked. "Yep!" I said, taking out the bottle of KHP. "Did you go to the movie club?" I thought. I didn't remember any movie club. Oh, the film organization. "Yeah, a couple of times." I said. She took her bottle of KHP and we went to our weighing stations. "I thought I remembered you from that." She said. I weighed my three samples and recorded the data in my lab notebook. "Do you remember me?" She asked. "Yep!" I said. I put the KHP back in the container and took my samples back to my lab table. I am not good at meeting people. I never really know what to say. How to carry on conversations. And then I get lost in my own thoughts. I'm just not a very sociable person, I guess. Oh well. Something to work on, I guess. I started to network with the rest of the cartoonists on the staff. Talking to them and friending them on Facebook. Meeting up with them i...

I tried to finish drawing the story arc in my comic today as fast as I could. I was doing pretty well for a while. Everything was looking surprisingly good and I was making good time until all of a sudden my computer shut off. And I hadn't finished. Or gotten a chance to save. And Photoshop doesn't have an auto-save or a recovery function. So I lost most of the work. But, that's how it goes. Now I'm frantically trying to download the Windows 7 Release Candidate and install it before my computer shuts down. Apparently the "bi-hourly shutdowns" started today. Which, I think, is pretty ridiculous. But better than having your computer melted or completely shut off forever, I guess. Friday is coming up quick, and I'm mildly excited. Free Willy, it turns out, is two hours long. Sitting through it as a little kid was much easier. Sitting through it again now? I'd almost rather have my computer shut down before I'm re

Sometimes I open up chat windows with people and don't type anything. I think about what I want to say. What I'd like to say to them. I try to figure it out before I start so that it will sound eloquent. Sophisticated. Charming. Classy. I don't like fumbling for words. It's graceless. And some people just know exactly how to tie up your tongue. With a nervous kind of energy. I sit and I think and then they sign off. Or I start talking and forget everything. It's silly. That is how things go, sometimes.

I'm tired of going to school. I kind of just want to sit around and write my zombie story for a while. And play some music. Maybe draw some comics. I guess we're planning on seeing Transformers eventually. It was just a sort of vague suggestion that got agreed on. It'll get figured out. I struggle with turning off my brain during movies. It'll be good for me. My inner snob really comes out when it comes to movies. I have a hard time just sitting and enjoying hours of mindless explosions and weak plots. And I have a hard time getting over my dislike of terrible fad actors and talentless directors. And I can't get over the fact that you have to pay a lot of money to have your brain rotted out of your skull. And I can't stand the mindless obligation that people exhibit when a new film gets excreted into theaters. But I really like Starscream.

I love taking trips with friends. The more friends, the better. We used to take big trips when we were all still in high school band. To Corpus Christi every other year. And we got to pull pranks. One year our friend fell asleep on the couch with his hand nestled on top of his crotch. We were young and juvenile men then. Not much has changed. So, naturally we messed with him. We put toothpaste and shaving cream on him. When he woke up and found out what we'd done, he got angry. We all pretended to have been asleep. I told him that the front door had been left unlocked. We all speculated that someone had come inside while we were all asleep and perpetrated the prank. He believed it. We were in a hotel with doors that locked themselves. He believed us for years until we finally told him the truth. He was speechless. I'm excited for Schlitterbahn.

My friend came back from India with Indian candy. So, we sat down and ate some. We struggle to scrape the thin layer of aluminum foil off of the candy as it had apparently been glued to the candy pieces. Only afterward did we find that the candy was supposed to be constantly refrigerated and thrown away after two days. And things take an inconvenient turn for our plucky hero.

I've noticed that the worst drivers on the road (speeding, tailgating, swerving, general poor driving, overly aggressive, most road rage prone, etc.) tend to have church bumper stickers on their vehicles. I'm not sure why it is that way. But I don't like it.

Balancing logic and faith seems like a very hard thing to do. Some people seem to manage it, though.

"Geology pre-med?" They say. "That's a strange combination." I cock my head and grin. "I know." "And what do you want to do with that?" They ask. "Maybe be a doctor. Maybe stick with geology." "What do you want to do?" They ask. "Music." "Oh." I've noticed that I like to be different. I try to be. Try to stand out. Be eccentric. Try to do things people don't expect. Try to do everything. Like learning new and arbitrary instruments. Like being a pre-med geologist. It's a thrill, doing something out of the norm. Being a jack-of-all-trades. People try to focus their lives too much. They limit themselves and miss out on everything. I'm not a rebel, I'm not a non-conformist, and I'm not trying to grab a spotlight. I'm just having a good time.