CATHARSIS II

Wow,

I haven't had so much to report in so long, and I have to say, thankfully, that almost all of it is positive.

I'll work reverse-chronologically from tonight back to, let's say, about two weeks ago.

Tonight: I haven't had so much fun since the night before I threw up blood in the corner bathroom stall at the robot job. I worked a very fun day at the robot job, in fact; my services were leased out to one of the other companies housed within my building, tearing apart desks and cubicles to make room for new employees, who will be entering said company through the labors of ^^^their new HR associate^^^ (EXPLANATION: emboldened triple carets flanking a phrase or word in this entry are indications of chronologically-independent cross-references. I won't link them directly, but will rather cite them all and allow you to hunt through the entry to determine which items are being linked). It's always fun to build shit, as I do often in the robot job, but every once in a while it's refreshing to tear things apart lying on your back holding a screwgun at awkward angles in tightly confined cells. I don't know why this is the case, but in my case, it's certainly true. I got to leave early and arrived home just in time to see our good previously-unreferred-to (at least in the blog) neighborhood wanderer, Terrell Holley.

Background information on Terrell, italicized: Terrell is a young man who lives near my neighborhood and due to some mental challenges, the nature and diagnosis of which is absent to me, excepting the behavioral anomalies that indicate being a few proteins short of an enzyme, is unable to obtain gainful employment. Therefore he is relegated to the task of performing unsatisfactory manual labor long the lines of lawn mowing in the spring and summer, leaf raking in the fall, and snow removal in the winter. He has not yet mastered the business skills and social interactability requisite to earning regular clients for his services, mostly because he changes his prices constantly and cannot comprehend a potential customer's disinterest in hiring him. I've had him perform work at 237 Weldon on numerous occasions, mostly out of my desire to help those less fortunate than I, but from time to time I have to tell him 'no, thanks.' This does not stop him from relentlessly harping on myself and my housemates for work, and unfortunately the manner in which he does so almost always renders one of us frustrated, frightened, or just plain perturbed. For example, if he sees a car parked in the driveway, he'll assume that it's perfectly acceptable to pound on any available surface, be it a closed window, a door, etc., for a good ten to fifteen minutes trying to rouse somebody to pay him for some work he wants to do. At its worst, he finds that a door is unlocked and pokes his head inside to yell "hello?", without exaggeration, for ten to fifteen more minutes, until someone responds to him or he's arbitrarily deemed it time to move on to the next house. He has on several occasions awoken us in the middle of infrequent precious slumber. While this sounds absolutely unbearable and intolerable, (and, it actually is in every imaginable sense), he has this innocence that can only be encompassed by the mind of a person found wanting in the realm of cognitive lucidity extruding from within him, and is therefore practically impossible to have the ^^^"I don't want you to ever return to this property"^^^ applied to him.

So, there I am, pulling into my driveway a crisp two hours ahead of schedule to find Terrell at my front porch. He asks me for an advance payment to shovel my driveway at the end of the week, as he's checked the weather reports and has determined that Friday will deal a pummeling blow in the form of crystalline dihydrogen monoxide (these are not the words he used). I craftily and politely dismissed him, still bearing the full weight of cash in my wallet prior to our exchange, and proceeded to head inside. I found all the doors in the house opened, which triggered a slightly alarmed response, since everyone in the house knows to keep the living room door shut, damn Ralph and his upstairs Haven of Feline Prohibition. I shrugged it off and headed upstairs to the attic to check on the copious amounts of expanding foam we applied the night before (PICTURE). I decided not to say hello to my housemate Amanda because her light was off and there was no sound emanating from her room... ^^^she must be napping^^^. My investigations were curtailed unexpectedly by the front doorbell, which turns out to have been rung by one of Rochester's finest on patrol. He explained that he was responding to a call from a neighbor who said that our house was being broken into. I put two and two together, knowing Terrell's tendencies to infringe on our personal space, and explained to the officer that it was just Terrell trying to find someone to talk to about shoveling, and that he was harmless. As if on cue (and I later found out that it actually was on cue), immediately after the officer radioed back to HQ about the call being erroneous, Amanda emerged downstairs visibly distraught and on the verge of tears. She proceeded to explain to me that Terrell had not just shown up as I arrived like I had assumed. In fact, Terrell performed the following recursion*: Knock on door for ten minutes. Enter my fucking home and proceed to walk around downstairs, evidently looking for us, for another ten minutes. Walk back outside and close door, knock again. RINSE. REPEAT. FOUR TIMES. That's right, my friends, Terrell was in and out of my house for 45 minutes, scaring Amanda half shitless. The poor girl was hiding in her room ^^^on the phone with a 911 operator^^^!!! She didn't come down until the cop radioed to the 911 operator that I was back home and it was safe to emerge. Needless to say, the police now have a record of his indiscretion, and if he so much as looks at us funny, I'm going to ^^^tell him what he needs to hear^^^, and if he ever again decides to intrude, he's going to face several legal penalties. We calmed down and I took a nap.

Okay, now that I've gotten the negative out of the way, I can continue to recap my recent adventures.

Shit, I can't keep going... I've been a bit loquatious tonight, and I promise I'll continue the recap soon. So for now, This is Kevin, signing off. The upcoming stories will be great.

*Recursion, in this case, I chose to use based upon the Latin definition, simply, "a repetitive event", not (as some of you computer-savvy individuals might be inclined to interpret) a call to a function from within a previously run instance of the function itself.

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.

ORATORY 5

This won't make sense until you listen to the previous post.

ORATORY 4

be sure to listen to the next entry as well, kinda completes the piece.

ENSUING

Ahem,

The arrival of the heretofore unspecified time-to-conclusion of my little contest from post previous is officially announced. I must say, for all the time that's been allotted for reader response, in consideration of the at least four people who read this blog, I'm a little saddened by the fact that only half of you ventured a guess. But, the feeling passes. On to bigger and better things...

...such as announcing the winner of the contest!

Shit, saddened again. Of the two entrants, Rob and Nichelle, one posted a valid solution set in the least amount of time without outside council, but entirely lacked theoretical explanation, while the other posted a valid solution set in slightly more time with outside council, but noted a very critical point on the theoretical side. Alas, no clear-cut winner will be determined, as both entrants were mostly correct in damn near the same amount of time (which I will note, were on the order of six times faster than the time it took me to find my solution - to my credit, I did it without a computer program while both entrants' solutions were derived from program output), so I will announce Rob and Nichelle to be co-winners of the grand prize six pack! Since neither contestant flat-out defeated the other, one six pack prize will be awarded; it will be rationed out equally (two for Rob, two for Nichelle, and two for me because I can do that... it's my damn contest, so shut up already... dick).

Typically at this point, the full contest solution would be presented for all to see. Since I like doing things differently, however, and since you guys know that about me, I'm deliberately not not going to be typical, which is different than what I usually do, and I will thereby present the solution I was looking for:

The Solution
Considering the method by which the students chose to alter their lockers, one can infer a certain number of things:

(1) The second student will affect all lockers that are a multiple of two, the fiftieth student will affect all lockers that are a multiple of fifty, and so on.

(2) Conversely, a locker number that is, for example, a multiple of two and of fifty, such as locker #100, will be affected by both students two and fifty. If those two affect locker #100, then the students that represent all other numbers that multiply together to equal 100 will also stop on this locker.

(3) This reveals that a locker of a certain number will be affected exactly as many times as the number of integer multiples it has, or in short: the number of factors a locker number has, that is how many times its state will change.

(4) Since they all started closed, and the sequence begins with student one, at the end of the sequence a locker will be opened if it has an odd number of factors, and it will be closed if it has an even number of factors.

NOTE: At this point I went ahead and started going through the numbers and figuring it out manually. After a bit I realized that there was a pattern emerging. The first thing I noticed was that the number of closed lockers between each open locker increased by two each time, ie., there were two closed lockers between the first two open lockers, then there were four closed lockers between the next two open lockers, then there were six closed, etc. Upon further inspection, I realized what else was going on.

(5) Most numbers have an even number of factors, simply because it takes two numbers to multiply together in order to be considered multiples of the number in question. This is true for every single number except for a select few: perfect squares. Perfect squares are the only numbers out there which have an odd number of factors, simply because one of their factors is counted twice... rather, a perfect square has an even number of factors due to the definition of multiplication, but a perfect square will always have an odd number of unique factors. A practical example, in case I didn't explain it well enough in words:

35 - this number is hit by the following: 1 X 35 and 5 X 7. As such, it will end up being closed, due to the even number of unique factors - 1, 5, 7, and 35.

36 - this number is hit by the following: 1 X 36, 2 X 18, 3 X 12, 4 X 9, and 6 X 6. As such, it will be closed, because being a perfect square, in order for there to be an even number of multiples, 6 has to be used twice; therefore, there are only an odd number of unique factors (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 12, 18, and 36), and it will therefore be open.

So, in extremely short form, all lockers whose numbers are perfect squares, will be open.
End of The Solution

This took me about half an hour to stumble through, and I bounced a bit of theory upon partner-in-crime and answer-man Joe Farnsworth. But, that's neither here nor there. What is definitely here, is that the contest is over and the (co-)winners have been announced.

But incidentally, a contest of only winners really indicates that no one's beaten anyone, and therefore invalidates the very notion that defines their label, in this particular case. As such, I have decided that I will simply buy a six pack and drink it. I will then tell Rob and Nichelle how it was. My prediction: Delicious.

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!

JOCOSE

You may like foreign cars. You may like small cars. You may hate either, as a matter of fact, but with complete disregard to the preceeding, you will love this commerical for this small foreign car. The Citroen C4. That is all.


And before I forget, I finally have my gmail invitations. If you have any interest in opening a gmail account (the AMAZING-AND-COMPLETELY-WORTH-IT search-based webmail service from Google), then be one of the first ten people to get in touch with me and I will bring you into the loop. It's kinda like a gentlemen's club, really: Those who know about it love it, and everyone else hates them for being involved with it*. Except that there are way more naked chicks in gmail than at a gentlemen's club. Fucking spam**.

---

* Because they're so damn jealous and don't know how to admit that they want in.
** Gmail actually has great spam filters; I just needed something to tie my analogy together.

ORATORY 3

So I received this great christmas gift, a 12 hour long dissertation from this man, Robert Kiyosaki, about better ways to manage your money and build assets. It's a very entertaining thing to listen to, case in point.

I am going to get rich, by the way.

RECRUDESCE

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

ORATORY 2

One thing that might make that post make more sense is the following clarification: The Iraquis were the ones who set all those oil well fires in Kuwait. Oil well fires make lots and lots of smoke; I neglected to make that association to the report. Hope you can forgive me.

I'd have forgiven you, you thoughtless bastards.

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.

INTERREGNUM

Having been one full month since my last posting, I found it necessary to doff my slouch cap and gear back up into the exercise of bloggery.

This should be a very easy entry to write, as I've only done six things since my last entry. Four of them involve snoring.

If you know me, (and if you're reading this, then you obviously do, at least to an extent that would be sufficient to claim so for the purposes of this statement), you have already realized that in one month's time, it's far closer to accurate to state that there are only six things I haven't done since my last entry. Five of them involve snoring.

In something of a reverse-chronological stream-of-consciousness oration, I will attempt to recap the last thirty days of synaptic backwash, hopefully to some grand conclusion. Or, hell with it, it'll just feel good to have written again.

Where's George. For those of you who've never seen or noticed the little stamp that appears with quasi-rare regularity on one dollar bills innocuously reading "www.wheresgeorge.com", you are missing out on a sublimely entertaining hobby/game which was created by a handful of dudes with the noble goal of doing something cool and fun and not trying to make money off it. Yeah, it's ironic, I know already, Alanis. Anyway, the creators of this site have built a powerful database system for the sole purpose of tracking the sightings of dollar bills with this stamp on them; the idea is simple: Have you ever wondered where a bill has been, how far it's traveled before making its way into your wallet? Want to find out where it goes after you've parted with it? Wheresgeorge allows you to enter a bill's information (series and serial number) into the database. If it's been stamped, then it's been entered before, and you'll be taken to a list of the locations and dates from other users who've entered the bill when it was in their possession. If you're the first person to enter a bill, you can stamp or write the web address on it, make the first entry, then see where it goes. It often takes a long time for a bill to surface, as it not only has to be spent and make its way into another person's hands, that person has to notice the stamp and take the time to go to the website and enter it for themselves. It seems dull and pedestrian to get excited about something that has such a slim chance of happening within the limit of modern man's patience, but sometimes surprising things come up. It's sort of a spin on geocaching, where the cache (no pun intended) moves from place to place. I personally do not start bills of my own, but when I come across one, I enter it. I grabbed one out of my register at Old Navy tonight (don't worry, I put a clean bill back. I don't steal money from work, just mints), to discover that I was the second entry on the bill. The initial entry was over two years ago, in Wyoming. Despite 'sleeping' for over two years, it traveled an average of two miles per day, as the crow flies. I want to save it until I'm out in California, just to throw another crazy leap into the bill's history. Next time you see one of these bills, take a moment to check it out; you might find an interesting story attached to the innocent little piece of tender we love to cast about with nary a thought.

Long Live Rock. So, I got out of work at midnight, and somehow found myself in Charlotte with best-friend Paige and best-friend-in-training Bill and Bill's-friend (name forgotten) about twenty minutes later. What we stumbled upon, at Nola's BBQ (next door to the infamous Penny Arcade), was the most bizarre, bothersome, unique, entertaining, laughable excuse for a concert we've ever seen. The Long Live Rock Show, which is like a band, or maybe an acting troupe who spend most of their time playing instruments, performing kind of a gig, kind of a play, but not entirely one of either, and definitely gay to the fullest, because they seem to believe that this was the best idea anyone ever came up with. The following is taken directly from the pamphlets strewn all over the bar:

THE LONG LIVE ROCK SHOW
A ROCK AND ROLL ...FANTASY
...DREAM
...STORY

Step into our working man's dream of becoming a rock star!

The Long Live Rock Show begins with our bored and frustrated working man stepping into yet another lonely hotel room, bemoaning his job and his life. As he falls exhausted onto his bed, he is visited by the Dream Fairy who grants his greatest wish: to be a rock star!
That's where the live rock concert begins!
As our "rock star" emerges from his hotel room to meet his audience (that's YOU!), he overcomes his fear, meets his dream band, and launches into a show containing the hottest rock from the 60's to today! The lights, the sound, the video all pump our average Joe toward achieving his goal
...and you'll be drawn into the dream!
See his "look" change as he travels through various eras of great rock and roll. Occasionally our star will "yawn and turn over" as the band entertains him in his dream... but you know he'll be back and you'll be right back in the palm of his hand!
As our star awakens from his dream, he'll wonder (and you may too) if it was ever a dream at all... and the show kicks right back in!

So, you can gather that these people are obviously very, very proud of themselves. I mean it, they really love who they are. They think it's the coolest thing that they're doing... whatever it is one would call this. What made the whole thing so remarkable is that they were good. It was a seven-piece band, all of whom were fantastic instrumentalists or signers. The music selection was phenomenal. They could cover Van Halen as well as they could cover Evanescence, and just about everything in between. They played Led Zeppelin like they were empowered by Zoso, the God of Melodious Ass Kicking. And between songs, various band members would take their turns bantering on about this that and the other, and telling inside jokes which the rest of the band found hilarious, though no one in the audience had a clue as to what was so funny. We stood there on the balcony (this venue was incredibly built, looking like massive dollars were spent in renovations and investments; we all took a particular liking to the place, and Bill, enterprising individual that he is, got around to talking to the bar's general manager, in an office amidst piles of money and other cool things, about reserving the place AT NO COST for a party in May. Evidently my band will be playing there for this party, so stay tuned for updates) and couldn't help but laugh throughout the whole thing. A lot of my laughter was fueled by enjoyment of great music. A lot more of my laughter was fueled by the sheer hilarity of 40-somethings running around thinking they were the shit with their own little pseudo-rock opera. I don't want to lie to you, I was very entertained. But it was bittersweet, in the sense that I was watching these people and realizing that I was being entertained by the exact thing I despise about the music industry. I was being entertained by that which I pray never to become. I HATE seeing great musicians wasting their talent playing other peoples' music. I'm okay with being in a cover band right now, because it's simply a hobby. We write our own music as well, and play a fair mix of both. Playing covers is not my livelihood. So many things feel wrong to me, spiritually, karmically, practically, when I think of people who make their lives out of being a super-polishedc over band. If they're so good that they can play Aerosmith songs more convincingly than Aerosmith can, then they're too good to be playing covers at all. They should be making their own music. Being the best cover band in the world, or even worse, a tribute band of any rank, either means you're a crappy writer but still want to cash in (= soulless fucknut), or too lazy with too little vision to be respected for your own talent ( = lazy visionless fucknut). Fucknut fucknut fucknut. And yet, the music got better and better throughout the night. The songs kept being awesome, and I kept enjoying myself. As I've been explaining to the people who've been wandering around my living room in the wee hours of the morning, it's like when a friend zaps you with one of those electric shock novelty toys and you go, "Fuck, that sucked! Now, gimme! I need to play this trick on someone." I saw this band play tonight. It hurt. But it felt good too. The jury is still out on this one, as far as my overall appraisal of the experience. But I don't need to know my feelings on it to know that I want to bring friends with me to see this again. Other people need to have this imparted upon them, just so they can share in it with me. I don't want to feel this alone. It's just too much. I made it home without incident and began to write this blog entry.


Shit. All this was just today. I don't think I have it in me to go through the entire month. Reader's Digest inspires me to synopsize the remainder:

Several close buddies of mine and I played paintball a week or so ago for Mark Skryzowski's birthday. The guys had a blast, the girls had a blast. Everyone was bitten by the bug; there were many first-timers out, and all of them loved it. We are going to play again and I can't wait.

I'm getting a dishwasher for Christmas. There's also a girl moving into the house in January. There are some compound and redundant benefits there. I can't wait, because I'm sick of playing mom.

The Jones Effect is back at it again. We're practicing weekly, and finally beginning to write some new material, which will be my first opportunity for contribution with Eric and Josh. We're all quite excited. Look for us to be playing at Steel Music Hall in January, at Nola's BBQ in May as previously noted, and probably several different places in the period between.

Old Navy is filling up with hot chicks. And cool chicks. Most of them belong to both categories. I will never leave that job.

Let's see if I can write again before 2005. One month is appropriate for bills, full moons, and menstrual cycles, but not for blog entries.

I'm so sorry I just said that disgusting thing about full moons.

INTEMPERANT

I have to admit it, I had an absolutely astonishing, entertaining, and fulfilling day today.

But I'm going to talk about last night... simply because if you'd been there to witness last night as it happened, by comparison you'd give much less than a rat's ass about what I did today.

It all started harmlessly enough, with several friends and I continuing a home-beautification project, namely, insulating my attic to prepare it for future tenancy. We performed such tasks dutifully and accomplished much, as seen here:



My trusty work crew and I, highly satisfied with our accomplishments, decided to reward ourselves with a little good food and a lot of pregaming:



And that picture was taken before we got drunk.

So, a drink or two later, we were driven to Whiskey, where we rendezvoused with several people who liked buying drinks for complete strangers. By the end of the night, I actually performed a one-handed cartwheel into a wall on purpose; this made sense to me at the time, and I hasten to assume it was because someone offered me a free drink if I performed the aforementioned task for the audience that was the entire bar.

Now, I'm pretty sure that if I were a bartender (and I am, from time to time) and I watched a drunk man make a bet with a drunker man that he should perform a stupid human trick (and a potentially injurious one at that, and not just for the perpetrator... and by the way, that doesn't count as referring to myself in the 3rd person) for a rum and coke, I would refrain from serving either of them for the remainder of the night. But then, I guess that's why I love Whiskey (the bar, not the beverage; I'm much more of a bourbon person when it comes to the hard stuff)... they tolerate the drunkards because they are drunkards themselves. For that matter, they're drunkards with a stiff coke (the illicit drug, not the archrival of Pepsi) habit, which, while it invokes the 'tu quoque' fallacy against me, certainly puts them in the least appropriate position to judge me.

Before this transpired, we managed to get my dear former roomie Mary away from a term paper for, as she put it, "one beer, and then I'm leaving." I love Mary, because 'one beer' means, she'll have a beer with us, and then turn to mixed drinks for the rest of the night. She stayed at Whiskey for a couple hours as opposed to the half hour she promised she'd have to leave by, but she only had one beer.

After we were chauffeured home, I spilled my will to live (cleverly disguised as my last two boxes of mac n' cheese) all over the kitchen floor as I attempted to pour the noodles back from the strainer into the pot. After a heartbroken five minutes of sandwiching slain noodles between steamed and gooey paper towels, my fellow roommate Joe took pity on me and offered me the rest of the noodles he cooked up earlier. Actually, it wasn't pity; they were supposed to be for my fellow roommate Eli, but he had inadvertently passed out on the couch atop a pile of tools and fiberglass-laden bunny suits.

I don't remember much after that, but I woke up feeling refreshed, but exhausted, requiring me to naturally assume that after I blacked out I ran a marathon and ate a smorgasbord upon finishing before retiring to bed. When I woke up, I most certainly was not laying atop a pile of tools and fiberglass-laden bunny suits, so I had a better night than someone, at least. To top it off, I don't believe I was entirely sober the following morning when I called home to wish my grandmother happy birthday.

It was a good night.

And just for good measure (and to keep you from shoehorning me into the 'predictable' category), I'm throwing in a picture of my ideal woman. If you look anything like this, call me and we'll go out for dinner:




RISIBLE

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

SUSCEPTIVE

Okay. Bandwagon, ho!

You Are a New School Democrat

You like partying and politics - and are likely to be young and affluent. You're less religious, traditional, and uptight than most Democrats. Smoking pot, homosexuality, and gambling are all okay in your book. You prefer that the government help people take care of themselves.

What political persuasion are you?

ORATORY 1

Just when we thought cellphones couldn't get any more features, some wunderkind decides that we need a little more connectivity. They're even working on speech-to-text blogging, which could be cool, once you get used to dictating punctuation ("Hello comma mother dash fucker comma it's nice to see you again semi-colon you have to visit me more often period"). What with all the programmable key-entry macros and voice-activated dialing, I worry my fingers will soon atrophy due to chronic non-use. Makes me sick.

But who am I kidding? Being one to jump on the bandwagon, especially if I'm guaranteed a front seat, I embraced this wonderful technology as it currently exists and have decided to flaunt it here.

That's right, Prose Justice is now Cochlear-Enabled.

I don't expect that I'll use audioblogging too often, but when I do, it'll be a nice change of pace.

---

*I HATE the word 'holla' but will knowingly and willingly use it in jest to promote the disrespect of the word. I suggest you all do the same.

Chupacabras Lives In The Wrong Neighborhood

So I'm posting about Halloween on what my computer tells me is November 1st. Fine. To my credit, I haven't slept yet, so this I'm still in the same period of consciousness as I was during the entire day of All Hallows Ween... so back off punk.

As I put on a costume corporeally in celebration of this holiday, I figure when I post my blog, it should be in proverbial costume as well.

So here goes, my blog, dressed up as a blog entry from Madness and Musings, a finely crafted and extensively entertaining blog penned by dear friend Ray Ward.

---

I think we all need a time or two every once in a while to consider our nation's status in the realm of internal health. Right now, there are clearly too many problems with our own infrastructure. And they're all associated with our flagrant disregard for natural balance. Obviously, I'm referring to the unnaturally large population of livestock in the USA.

Being the fattest nation in either of the world's known hemispheres, as calculated by the simple process of excavating a vast chasm beneath the surface of the country, erecting a gigantic scale within that chasm and using it to weigh the total mass of the country, then subtracting the combined mass of soil, building materials, personal property, large trees, domesticated and wild animals (with the exception of dogs; there are some fat fucking dogs out there and they don't deserve to be eschewed from scrutiny), all lakes and rivers, Joan Rivers (who is unclassifiable), vehicles, and birds who are not currently in the air, as estimated by an eleven year old in Wisconsin named Brian, thus yielding the total weight of humanity within our nation, which is then divided by the number of humans residing here, adjusted for the number of humans who are either in flight or currently jumping up and down, as estimated by a mixed-ethnicity centenarian in New Mexico named Angie-May, the result of which is multiplied by a correction factor that comes from a computerized number generator in the village of The Pentagon, OH, which is seeded by the number of seconds that have elapsed since President Lincoln was shot, resulting in a single quotient that is irrefutably accurate and is catchily referred to as the Personal Obesity Ranking Number, or PORN, which is then compared to the PORN from other countries as obtained by the same method (conducted in secret black-ops style missions by the Canadian Mounted Police), we have advanced our need to sustain such human fatness to an irreversible extent that requires an absolutely overwhelming number of fast-food restaurants to exist in close geographical proximity to each residential area.

Of course, this means that these restaurants require animal stocking on an order high enough to match the collective American appetite for skinned and heated cow muscle. And of course, an equal number of pickles, but I digress. The fact is, the amount of grazing space required to sustain so many animals is enormous, far larger than any gymnasium in fact, and vile individuals who operate under the obvious Mafia cover-title 'ranchers', are taking this land away from business industrialists to build up expansive 'ranches' to sustain these animals just long enough to grow them to proper killing size. These business industrialists, due to a lack of space for development here in the USA, are then forced to outsource their work to foreign children who have IQs of 120 but don't have the strength to walk on their own because their country's PORN is so inferior and they have no muscle mass. And that is why our infrastructure is going to shit.

And it doesn't stop there. "Chicken", a delicious synthetic food, which received its name because the cartoon picture that they decided to put on the product packaging looks uncannily like the actual farm animal that is famous for: (1) producing clouds of airborne feathers during periods of extreme distress, and (2) for being called "chicken", is being eaten at record-breaking rates; in 1998 these rates actually exceeded the maximum rate at which all the chicken machines in America could produce viable chicken food product, and the chicken-food industry began making chicken out of ACTUAL chickens to help meet supply. Now truckloads of incarcerated chickens can be seen leaving contrails of white feathers down every major highway in the country as they're transported from chicken 'ranches' to 'chicken kill-o-houses' for comestible preparatory purposes. Chicken kill-o-houses are HUGE. One Chicken kill-o-house could easily take up all the real estate in Louisiana, or at least as much real estate as can be found in one of those queer New England "states".

If this trend continues, the internet will collapse due to an unability to find enough space to keep building computers, which will be needed within the next six months, as estimated by the current rate of growth of Google. Furthermore, textile manufacturers will engage in bloody turf war with the IRS over valuable warehouse space. And people blame the president for the poor economy.

Kinda makes you wish you didn't eat so much, doesn't it, fatso? I can safely call you that because the internet is already beginning to collapse, and in fact, it does not exist anywhere in the world besides America, and since you're reading this, (1) you're obviously American and (2) you're disgustingly fat. If you didn't eat so much, the world would stop being so shocked by American PORN.

Is there a possible resolution to this woeful future? Not hardly. But I can tell you, things would have been much better if we imported a number of Mexico's most remarkable natural resources: the Chupacabras.

The chupacabras, seen here, is a fierce creature that looks like a batfaced wolf and walks upright on two legs, much like Mimi from the hit series "The Drew Carey Show". Its name, when translated from Spanish to whatever language this is, literally means "Goat Sucker". While one might initially believe this to refer to sexual behavior, let me clear this up immediately: Chupacabri have no genitalia. This was an evolutionary specialization; they reproduce asexually without genitalia, therefore them leaving no distraction from their solitary intrinsic life purpose: sneaking around and eating livestock.

What's unfortunate is that Mexico is a very lean country, in terms of their PORN, and they have hardly any livestock to speak of as a result. What few ranches exit in Mexico are constantly plagued by raiding chupacabri, stifling what piddly meat economy they have... far below levels that would be internationally respected. In the USA, however, these animals would be neither a bane nor a burden, but a shadowy health vigilante figure. Left to their own instincts, even a single clan of chupacabri could decimate five percent of the USA's obnoxiously large livestock supply within five years. Double the number of chupacabri and that timeframe is actually reduced by sixty percent, as estimated by the autistic daughter of the Mayor of Biloxi, MS. The resulting reduction in beef consumption should allow the United States to return to much healthier PORN levels.

I'll come right out and say it. The numbers add up. I will make a statement, loud and clear, a statement that is validated by the pain I feel when I look into the windows of American homes and find gargantuan children beating their huge parents for not providing second-dessert after pre-dinner.

America needs its own Goatsucker.

Not literally, of course, but imagine, if you will, a figurative goatsucker. Now, honestly, if there was a goatsucker for every household there'd no longer be a need for PORN, but that's far too idealistic and utopian. The PORN will remain a part of our lives until our entire species is purged of that hideous compulsion to thrust ourselves upon our meat and suck down the byproducts with grotesque zeal. So I submit, we cannot solve this problem in its entirety, but we can reduce its damaging effects upon our economy. We don't need a goatsucker per household; we just need one goatsucker for the country. Then again, maybe we already have one.

And I submit, he may be Richard Simmons. I know, he's laying low right now... but I have a feeling that he's planning an uprising against the livestock in this nation, and he's going to engage in a bloody rampage to rid the country of red meat. Of course, he'd keep the chicken, because it's so damned delicious, but at least the red meat will be gone and maybe some day we Americans will find that our PORN is something we can be proud of.

It hasn't happened yet... but just wait. It's coming.

EPHEMERAL

"For the record, I'm faring rather well, and have a lot of overdue positives coming to fruition that balance out the misfortunes and difficulties past." - Me

Wow, so much has transpired since my last blog entry. I've been insanely busy with great big things (not 'great big' meaning 'really big'... more 'great big' meaning 'wonderful and substantial'), and as such I haven't had time to post.

This entry is something of a digital Post-It® note of candidates for potential blog entries that are due to be written, but with less of that gummy glue stuff on the underside:

• Beautification of the Troup-Howell Bridge, and of Old Navy.
• Week one of my New Ass-Kicking Job, and my Other New Ass-Kicking Job.
• Songs I'm writing.
• The girlfriend I still don't have.
• Racing in automobiles.
• Being back in Rochester and improving my home.
  

I'll take suggestions, as per the interactivity du jour of several of my fellow bloggers, as to which of the above listed topics should be elaborated upon.

Ahh, I've missed this. Blogging, that is. Before I lay down to sleep this morning (after 17 hours of employment I'm nuts I really mean it), I'm going to leave with two thoughts that have been in and out of my mind recently. They are as follows:

1. The 'Family Values' ticket, which you can find on your garden variety voters' ballot, really means 'Undercover Christian'.
2. Too many pregnant women abuse the 'eating for two' allowance. Babies generally weigh no more than 12 pounds, on the high side, at birth. Women should typically gain about that much weight in addition to the weight of the baby, which, for the mathematically retarded, is generously totaled to 30 or fewer pounds of extra pudge. What's with the gaining of 50 or 100 pounds during a pregnancy, and only losing 12 pounds when the kid pops out? Ladies, I have to argue. First off, 'eating for two' doesn't mean you eat twice what you used to eat. That second person is WAY smaller than you are. Second, 'eating for two' only applies DURING the pregnancy, not for the next two years. Maybe women need more practice at giving birth. I mean, just about all of the ladies who've had more than six children don't seem to have any trouble with it... if they did what some of these crazy pregnant chicks do, they'd weigh 150 pounds on the fucking moon.*

---

*Okay, sorry I got a little harsh on that last one. It's because I'm wicked tired and the drugs wore off already.

BELLIGERENT

I was unable to view the Vice-Presidential debate because of a scheduling conflict with an important family matter. While I intend to finish reading the transcript from that debate and comment afterward, it will have to wait, as I was fortunate enough to catch the second Presidential debate live. So while the opinions are fresh, I'll harvest the crop of them first and return to the VPs later. Comments tonight will be far diferent than those in my review of the first debate, primarily due to their condensed content. I'll get right to the point* this time.

Presidential Debate (again)
Bush-Kerry Round 2 was a dead heat. I will thusly award one half-point to each candidate, bringing the points total (as awarded, once again, by myself and myself only) to:

Kerry: 1.5 Points
Bush: 0.5 Points

I'll speak on Kerry first. The man had some zingers, again, but he conversely performed the verbal equivalent of holding his own hands behind his back to alow George to punch repeatedly at his unprotected midsection. Specifically, when Kerry allows Bush to use "The Wrong War At The Wrong Place At The Wrong Time™" as a present-tense, ongoing sentiment. Bush said, "I don't think the leaders of the world will follow a man who says his war is the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time," and Kerry just let him go with it. Kerry said what he said, once and only once, in response to a specific statement, and when read in context it showed nothing more than Kerry's disagreement with the way Bush chose to progress in the war. Bush, with no resistance whatsoever, has been allowed over and over again to use the claim as if it's Kerry's current and forever stance on the War On Terror®, implying that Kerry as president would ask nations to come join in a war by advertising it as the wrong war. Would anyone
Kerry was almost too offensive at times


Bush charismatic and witty, engrossed the audience, handled himself much more confidently than last debate, referred to the canned phrases less than last debate as well. Trying to convince people that it's simple yes/no in every case. Can't say 'raised taxes 200 times' and use that as foundation to say Kerry will therefore raise taxes for people he promised cuts to. We don't know what taxes Kerry voted to raise. What if they were all for the rich?

---

*This is largely because I can't make much of a point this time around. While I felt like an enlightened intellectual with useful information with regard to Round 1, this time I'm much more of a squirming amateur with

MEMORIAM

James Arthur Riker
March 31 1950 - October 3 2004

James Riker, like all memorable men, was many things to many people. He served the role of husband, brother, uncle, and friend, and in each capacity he served with love and devotion. But as I stand here, it occurs to me that of all the people in the world, he was the only one who could serve the role he served to me, and of all the people in the world, I am the only one who knows how it felt to have him serve that role: the role of fatherhood. As such, it is in this regard that I choose to celebrate him with you now.

My father's defining characteristic, as anyone could confirm, was that he was a creator, a builder. In every aspect of his life in which he had a passion, he used that passion to bring forth good things. It was intrinsic to him. He made it his career and he made it his hobbies; in each thing he created, he poured a little part of himself into it.

My father was also wise. He naturally assumed the role of 'elder' and of 'mentor'. You hear the ubiquitous claim from many young children, "My daddy knows everything!", and so it was with me at that stage of my life. But the remarkable thing was, as I grew older and wiser, as I opened larger eyes to a larger universe so vast in scope and so full of uncertainty, he still had all the answers. Even into my young adult life, I could come to him with any unanswerable question, and as always, my dad knew everything. That was a rare and remarkable gift.

He led by example, and as such, the one most important lesson he bestowed upon me is one that I will not fully comprehend the importance of until I have my own children: he taught me about fatherhood itself. He taught me exactly what kind of father to be and perhaps even more importantly, exactly what kind of father not to be.

Like all the things he created as a builder, my father put a part of himself into me, and I dare say he put more into me than into anything else he was responsible for. There is quite a lot of my father within me. I believe this puts me in a unique position to carry his legacy forward, and to take on the massive burden of that responsibility, because he was such a big person. If I can make myself as successful in life as possible, and do great things in my life, and become that mentor and that elder, and to lead by example as he did, then I will have fulfilled my duty to that legacy.

My goal is to become the greatest thing my father ever created.

Before I finish, I want to remind everyone here that while we all possess our own private and internal suffering, a suffering that is unique to each person and will remain until its purpose is served, we all as well shared in a greater outward suffering for the sake of my father's own suffering. But I will say this: whatever true suffering he endured, that suffering of his is past and gone, and so too should be the outward suffering that we extended to him. I submit that in its place we should present something positive. If my father left his mark upon you, if he impressed something of himself onto you that you feel, then I charge you: please nurture it, cultivate it, acknowledge it, and do not deny it; do not feel guilty that you have something of him that makes you feel happy, despite the loss of the man himself.

If all of you who care for him and have his mark upon you can join with me, and celebrate that part of him he left with you, then he will be with us forever.

-taken from the eulogy I gave at my father's funeral service on October 5, 2004