BLASPHEMY - AVARICE

WHAT THE F%$#?*

Website emails your personal message to unbelieving friends after you're swept up in the rapture!

(Not a direct link - I always link through geekologie when they're my source)

Am I the only one that thinks that the people running this service are handily exempting themselves from the celestial self-checkout line by charging their customers $40 a year? Sure, it's not as much as an xbox live membership**... but they're essentially saying, "We're not getting into paradise anytime soon; we might as well get comfy while we wait".

Greed is one of those killer sins, after all.

And let's face it, most of those letters are going to be a variation on the "I fucking told you so" riff. ***

Also, I think they cribbed their delivery mechanism from Lost.


* - FUCK
** - but it's also slightly less fulfilling, unless the peace of mind of having the last word is THAT important to you.
*** - Hell, they already made it through the gate, what's the harm in a little harsh language... especially when it's directed a heathens aplenty?

BEHOLDEN

***This post was written over the span of several days, I will do my best to identify discrete changes between them.***

5/22/05
It's a good day. Partied hard last night. I woke up early and worked, satisfying any vestigial need to feel productive on a weekend. I returned to bed for a delightfully peaceful nap. Awakening for the second time today, I'm at the computer, there's a bowl of egg noodles in my lap, a reggae remake of John Denver's "Leavin' on a Jet Plane" is pouncing between dendrites in a far-removed corner of my auditory memory banks, and I am going to see Star Wars Episode III for the second time tonight*.

Having already seen the film in accordance with a three-times-reinforced tradition of attending the 12:01am opening show (Return of the Jedi: The Remake, and those other two we don't like to talk about - I'll give you a hint, they rhyme with 'Schmepisodes I and II'), I can spoil all sorts of stuff, but I won't. There are two reasons I'm willing to take this journey twice: (1) It was a much better movie than both Schmepisodes I and II, and (2) among those attending is Laurali Kinsella**, a favorite among my Califriends (all of whom are favorites among my entire circle of friends; why the hell do you think I'm moving out there? For the weather?), who is in town on a rare Rochesterian visit for her lovely sister Shawna's*** RIT graduation. While I missed the chance to see their parents over the weekend, I'm certainly not going to miss hanging out with them. Much fun happens around those two. Anyway, I'm psyched. Oh, and another reason to see the movie again - I'll get a better view without the opening-day faithful taking all the best seats before I get there.

5/24/05
What a lousy day. Did absolutely nothing last night, save getting unbelievably frustrated with my car as I put parts of it... no... attempted to put parts of it back together. I went to bed with every intention of getting up early in the morning to work on it and ended up sleeping through the entire first half of the day - and haven't even felt the benefit of the additional slumber. Awakening far too late today, I'm at the computer, there's instant oatmeal stuck to the roof of my mouth, a fledgling headache is plotting an attack somewhere near the base of my skull, and my wallet is still missing after the fiasco with that godforsaken movie.

Ebb and Flow, I despise you sometimes.

*Not to say that the first time I saw it was also tonight; had I chosen to better word the sentence, it would be apparent that I meant "tonight will mark the second time I've seen the movie."

**I know I look really drunk in that picture, but I promise I was just tired.

***Shawna is the one on the left.

OPEROSE

Eighteen hours.

Spent three hours driving.
Spent $15 on two free beers.
Spent the night in a closet.
Spent three hours on a tour bus.

God, I had the best time. Thanks, Paige.


Yes, I was a little selective in my anecdotal snippets. The rest of the story is just too cool to attempt a retelling in text.

CONFORMANCE

In the last month, there have been no small number of adjustments... no, resolutions... to my life that have permitted me to fall helplessly in love with where I am right now, even despite the now comical beleaguerement that is my long-term status as a bachelor with a heartache for feminine companionship and a soft spot for chick flicks.

Incidentally,

HOLY SHIT.

When I wasn't paying attention, the world's celestial odometer rolled past 2005 laps since the beginning of that crazy rally-race, "The Jesus' Beeline To Armageddon", and I forgot to blog about it. Needless to say, I had a rip-roarin' time: I (1) partied with several groups of friends, (2) commiserated with out-of-town pals of yesteryear, (3) negotiated a potential business partnership that could potentially have million-dollar-potential, (4) discovered that I "roll deep", (5) performed a killer rendition of Tenacious D's Fuck Her Gently while doped up on Bailey's and energy drinks, (6) made some amazing new friends out of old acquaintances, (7) welcomed a pair of ass-kicking tenants into my home, (8) kidnapped my best friend and let her lead my associates and I on an 8-day movie and drinking binge, (9) discovered that I make a bread-dipping oil so delicious that people start putting it on a whole slew of other foods that are in no way related to bread, and (10) was accused of sleeping with someone's girlfriend, when I had in fact only slept next to her, and only after she broke up with the aforementioned accuser.

I also drank a lot of coffee.

Despite this, I went to bed early more often than I ever used to. I can't tell really whether I'm needing more sleep or my friends are needing less. The average bedtime in my house (which has, incidentally, become a bed-and-breakfast of sorts in the last two weeks - we have housed no fewer than four unique guests for periods of at least three days in my living room, in addition to the permanent 5-person tenancy of the house itself) is somewhere between 3am and 7am, depending on how many episodes of 'Family Guy' are on my computer, and on how much Paige has had to drink (love you, hon!). It's remarkable what an effect that girl has on our day-to-day. In about a week, she'll return to SUNY Binghampshireburg, and gone will be the glue that's held this wild ride together. We're planning to go down and visit her within a week from then. She's honestly like gravity.

While there's much more to say, I'll let it go for another time. I'll leave you with a question taken from my housemate Amanda's homework. I encourage you to take a stab at it:

There is a highschool with exactly 1000 students and exactly 1000 lockers. One day, the students line up and perform the following: Student 1 goes inside and opens every single locker door. After he's done, Student 2 goes in, starting from the second locker, and 'reverses' every second locker door thereafter(since they're all open, he is only closing lockers). Student 3 goes in next, and starting from the third locker, 'reverses' every third locker door in the school (opening ones that are closed and closing ones that are open). The fourth student reverses every fourth locker, and so on until every student has passed through the school. At the end of this procedure, precisely which lockers will be open and which will be closed?

There are a few ways to solve this, the hardest of which would be to crunch the numbers manually, and the easiest of which (for some of us) would be to write a computer program to perform the operation for you, but for the rest of you who want nothing to do with either of the previous suggestions, there are patterns in the data, and with a basic knowledge of math and a little creativity, you'll be able to solve it with a generic expression of rules by which you can identify which lockers will be open.

To everyone who wants to play along, work out the problem on your own and time yourself. When you're done and have a solution you want to present, go ahead and put it up on the comments section under this post, along with how long it took you to figure it out.

First person to post a comment with the correct solution in the shortest time (this does not necessarily mean the first person to post correctly... I'm going on the honor system here, but if you solve it in ten minutes and you post after a person who did it in twenty, YOU win) wins a six-pack of their drink of choice, as long as I am capable of delivering it to them. A word of warning, there are different ways to successfully determine the solution, and some are more elegant than others. There is only one solution I will consider complete and correct.

Go for it! Come on, there's free alcohol in it for you!

RECRUDESCE

Ray Ward is back in Rochester. The insanity begins again.

DIVERTISSEMENT

Damian's Pub, arguably one of the most pleasant bars in the city, at least for the college-aged types within our sphere of influence, hosted a delightful Christmas party for welcome patrons tonight, complete with drink specials, dart craziness, and beer pong insanity. A better portion of my twenty favorite people were in attendance having the time of their lives together, which makes me a happy badass. More people need to realize that the true meaning of the season is not to spend our hard-earned financial assets on people who are kinda okay, but rather to drink ourselves to oblivion to the goal of succeeding in base competition within the realm of beer pong amidst the audience of close friends.

I think I'm too inebriated to make any sense of what I'm trying to say. I'd be better off eating the fine meal prepared for me by my close friend and roommate's girlfriend, Christina. Eating great pasta dishes is all the way better than trying to write well while drunk.

PERPLEXITY

Wow,
I feel almost like I've betrayed someone, somewhere, somehow. It's been
the better part of a week since I've posted here, certainly the longest absence
since the blog's inception. I'm actually a bit confused about how this
happened, as I'm having trouble remembering all that I've done since my last
post. I've certainly left the town more than once, left the state at
least once, made at least $100, and spent at least as much.

The most monumental occurrence of the past week has to be the Party That Was
Never Supposed To Be So Party-ish. By seven o'clock Wednesday night, we were starting to get
invitations from friends to a party at our own house later that evening.
What we'd expected to be a small gathering turned into a mid-week 'rager'
complete with not one, but at least four DJs spinning records in the basement,
beer pong and graffiti, and social interaction so dynamic and diverse we
couldn't see straight. Half the patrons were complete strangers to most
of us, yet everyone was unmistakably cool and easy to relate to. All in all,
a lot of people were relying on us to give them a great time, and everyone
seemed to have their expectations met. Which, as it happens, exceeds
mine.



I think I have a date with the one I want sometime soon; at the party we
decided we definitely needed to go out, now it's just a matter of picking the
day. We'll have wonderful fun, and I can't wait.



Man, I really don't like the new blog editor.

FORTITUDE

The closest I've ever come to running a marathon, blindfolded, through a razorblade-and-lemon-wedge field, was spending this past weekend as myself. What began as a long night of drinking whilst playing acoustic music to an empty bar for a shitload of money ended as a long night of drinking after playing acoustic music to an empty bar for a shitload of money. After waking at morning's asscrack the next day and driving for three hours, where an afternoon of tiling my bathroom eagerly awaited, accompanied by a refrigerator that needed to be taken down a flight of stairs, I performed said tasks with absolutely no beer to get me through it. Immediately upon completing all home improvements, I was whisked away to one of the most injurious games of field hockey we've ever played, though we were playing it with a frisbee, under a different name: Ultimate Frisbee. And we didn't have any field hockey sticks, which only made it harder. And there was, yet again, no beer to get me through it. The game lasted almost three hours and ended with four teams in a tournament rotation, as twelve people jumped in and joined the ten of us that were already there. I have never been more beaten, broken, exhausted, and otherwise diminished; never have I felt so alive and well.

Well, I'm off to Ray's for partying the night away.

REVERSION

So after drinking absurd amounts of alcoholic beverages, my friends and I found ourselves playing a game of hide -and-seek, tag style, a la elementary school rules. We entertained ourselves for the better part of an hour doing this, before picking up the Frisbee for a game of in-the-street-at-three-in-the-morning-neighborhood-Frisbee-toss. Nostalgia has never been so satisfying while being so... uncouth.

DISCONSOLATE

So, I'm a little perturbed at blogger; the site seems to have glitched a little lately, keeping me off my posting pace. But enough of that. Today was a good, long day, full of gratifying exertion. Friends and I performed all the site preparation requisite to refurbishing the Moran's party house, between 8 am and noon or so, then spent the next seven hours drinking bourbon and smoking cigars while waxing intellectual about business and finance. All in all, a very educational experience. Next phase is up on Thursday, when we reframe a wall to prep for the reroofing project that comprised the original scope of the job. Leave it to efficiency-minded individuals to find more and more work to do...

SOMNOLENT

Today was eventful and entertaining. I will, however, not relinquish the details at this time. Honestly, it's because I'm too tired to write. The ideas are there, and will be shared privately, but as is evident from trend as of late, I haven't much to say publicly tonight. To summarize, I made some good money, saw many friends, got exercise, ate great food, had a good beer or two, watched a movie, and treated a head wound (someone else's, not mine). It was a great day.

CONCILIATION

Once again, I am admittedly inebriated and incapacitated. All I wish for is rest and repair. But I have affection to carry me through the potential intricacies of my currently occluded state of mind. Damn moonshine, being so potent and seductive.

DERISORY

I'm ashamed... it's been too long since I've posted. It's mostly due to my long weekend away from home, but I still don't want to let myself get away from this. I treat blogging like a chore. Not that it's a matter of drudgery like, say, doing other peoples' dishes, but that it's important to do on a regular basis, like, say, cleaning your ears. But more fun. Like, brushing your teeth with charcoal. Because that's the best alternative when you're in the middle in the woods. Swear to God.

Time to get some sleep. I must remind myself to talk about the weekend, because it involved rock stardom and shitloads of alcohol.

INVETERATE

Back from camping, once more. Although the timespan of the trip was condensed in comparison to our previous trip, it was no less engaging. And Once more, as habituality rears its well-practiced head within me, I'm winding down the weekend's celebration with beer pong at Rayshine's.

An interesting twist this time, I crawled off the mountain barely in time to make it straight to work (after a shower, don't worry); I didn't even give myself time to unpack... that's how dedicated I am to camping out as long as humanly possible without jeopardizing my employable status. Okay, I lied. I definitely jeopardize my employable status on a weekly basis. 'Tis worth it. End of Story.

INSALUBRIOUS

Now, to completely change tone, I seem to have developed an unhealthy obsession with roughing it. This evening I'll be on my second camping trip in as many weekends. Not that living off the land and getting all the accompanying exercise is unhealthy, but the level of obsession definitely is (not to mention the requisite consumption of fatty foods and moonshine).

On the other hand, I'm certainly putting my gear through its paces, which is very good from an economical standpoint, since camping gear is as expensive as, say, skiing and golf equipment, for point of reference. If you don't know how expensive skiing and golf equipment are... well, they are as expensive as music equipment. Music equipment, for the record, is expensive; I could either own all my skiing, golfing, music, and camping gear, or I could own a different car for each day of the work week.

Nonetheless, not many things in life are as fun as either skiing, golfing, playing music, or camping, especially when partaking with your closest friends (who, interestingly, if you omit the second 's' from 'closest' in a freak typo moment, suddenly become 'closet friends', and they are a completely different category of people, though they can be pretty fun too).

I'll be back and civilized by Saturday... damn employment.

CONVALESCENCE

One of the best things a person can do to improve his state of wellness is take the time to retreat from the complexities of modern life. Another of the best things he can do for this same purpose is self-medicate, either by psychological or physiological means. Combine these techniques, and he will have concocted potentially the most effective means to better himself as a person and as a positively contributing member of society.

The above paragraph could be the most excessive justification for spending a weekend drinking in the woods that ever there was.

Somehow, just somehow, we managed to coordinate close to a dozen people spanning four metro areas in two states to rendezvous in the middle of absolutely nowhere (someplace on the periphery of the Allegheny National Forest... beautiful, mind you) in an attempt to throw an obscenely large party in honor of my roommate's 21st birthday. We succeeded.

Highlights of the weekend and inside jokes are as follows:

Impulse Grocering
Tent City
Log Tossing
Creek Keggin'
Venison Dogs
Moonshine 101
Miss Thomas
The Hippie Barrel
S'Mores Stick Fighting
Bowie Knife Madness
Explosive Wolves and Rocketing Bottles
Breakfast Beers
Mudbogging
Bridge Tossing
Freelance Logging
Block Breaking
Moonshine 201
Hardboiled Lighter Fluid
Saturn Missile Attacks
Bacon, Steaks, and Automobiles
The Magic 8-Tent
Moonshine For Engineers
Pancakes and Breakfast Beer
Aquatic Impreza
Cuba Cheese

I'll put up pictures as soon as they're downloaded and developed.

And what did I do to recuperate as soon as I returned from the weekend's revelry? Beer pong at Rayshine's, of course. It has something to do with not being scheduled for work until Friday this week.

EXODUS

A horde of us are heading into the Pennsylvania woods for the weekend in celebration of Hippie Joe's 21st birthday. Good times will be had by all. I will report back on Monday.

Cheers!

DEPRAVITY

My favorite quote of the night; I'd say it succinctly captures the spirit of this evening's revelry:

"Okay! That's it, no more licking breasts for me! I'm through!"

...quite a departure from the tone of my previous post...

...se la vie.

Ladies, you were a riot.