Word on the street is that it’s Valentine’s Day, and being that I’m just such a festive person, I’m already wearing a red t-shirt with a white long-sleeve shirt because today is the day of love, romance, infatuation, eating chocolate, and doing lovey-dovey things for the person you love the mostest in the world. So, in the spirit of the holiday, I’ll be giving little Hobbes an abundance of Pounce throughout the course of the day — that’s pretty much the extent of my Valentine’s Day-related excitement. I may help a couple of friends with their plans for the day, but I believe I’ll just spend the night doing homework and perhaps watching Undead (though Saw II will also be released, so that’s a nice alternative).

I don’t even have any particular dislike for Valentine’s Day, but I can’t very well be held responsible for the person in my life at this general time of every year to having extenuating circumstances; say… another boyfriend or lack of interest in that way (though generally the former). I can be held responsible if I did something to greatly aggravate said person near or on said date, but that’s normally not the case. It probably wouldn’t be such an issue if I was a far more outgoing kind of guy, but I have my close friends and venturing out beyond that ring is a bit of an issue for me. I’m working on it, sure, but we’re talking progress in the hundredths of a percent per year kind of thing.

And speaking of Hobbes Kitty: I feel kind of bad for the little guy, I’m starting to think that he’s not all there. That certainly doesn’t stop him from being a big time camera whore, though. It also doesn’t stop him from waking me up whenever gets the slightest glimmer of consciousness from me in the morning. If my eyes open up even the slightest bit or my leg twitches even a nudge I can always count on the cat moving over to the pillow I always sleep on and either laying on my head, licking my nose, or using his clawless paws to bat at my eyes until I open them again. It’s just all sorts of cute, I guess.

One of the great joys of a Michigan winter is snow football (it’s football… in the snow. Get it?). Me and five of my good buddies got together to take on another team of five other group of friends-of-friends on Saturday afternoon during the closest thing to a blizzard that we’ve gotten in the last couple months, and to say it was good fun would be a total understatement. Granted one of the others somehow managed to break his ankle within the first five minutes of play, so that completely stalled the game until the ambulance came and carted him out of the field, but after that it was a good time. The day before that I had bumped up my nightly run on the snow and ice encrusted track near my house to four and a half miles. And then the day after the football game (which, in a decent amount of snow, was kind of a workout) I had a fairly hard three and a half mile run. Now all I can say for my poor, poor little legs is “I’m sorry, I won’t treat you so badly again.” Though I will. And they know I will. It’s kind of our little thing.

I watch The O.C.. This is something of common knowledge for those who commonly read this site (or journal, for those of you reading this from alternate locations), and I say it not to discuss the show, but rather to discuss the show’s excellent taste in music. In a recent episode during a certain character’s funeral, a fairly amazing song was being played (also being replayed at the end of the episode), which took me a while to track down. The song is “For the Windows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti” off of a Sufjan Stevens album titled Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lakes State. I had not originally known that the singer was from Michigan and upon finding this out I was all like: !. It really is a great album though, and if you share any semblance of my loving feelings for Iron and Wine then you should be all sorts of stoked to go check Sufjan Stevens out. Go. Go now. And don’t go into the long grass!

Last night I rewrote a nice chunk of the first chapter of Paradise and while I really like everything that’s there, I think I’m going to end the chapter where it currently stands. With that said, I’m going to expand the entire chapter a bit in other places to make it a bit more entertaining to read. As it stands now, there’s primarily just a lot of description of certain aspects of the fallout shelter (descriptions which I’m actually quite fond of) but not a whole lot more — though I certainly like the ending. I’m going to do anything possible to have the current ending remain the end of the first chapter, but unless I think of a fairly compelling idea for adding something more to the what’s currently there, I’m just not sure that’s possible. Anyway, the updated draft of the first chapter, which doesn’t have any significant changes until the fourth page (at which point nearly everything after is new), can be found here (and here’s a direct link to the DOC file). I could use any support/feedback (or dinner and a movie, that’s a possibility too) you’re willing to give either in the entry comments or in an e-mail.

And that just about wraps it up. Happy Valentine’s Day everyone.

I wish I could explain in words just how much I love winter in general, but the fact that Christmas is just around the corner makes the whole feeling even more amazing. Whiteout-causing snowstorms where large amounts of college students gather for a dorm-vs.-dorm snowball fight in the middle of the night, where big inflatable Santa Clauses and Grinches populate frat house front lawns, and two week vacations from school make it even more of a joyous time. To be completely honest, the only things I really dislike about winter are that my flip-flops go totally out of style (and out of the realm of practicality, of which they weren’t even wanted in that circle during summer) and that I can’t rely on the use of the 400m track a few blocks away from my house. I have a fear of treadmills that I’m trying to overcome.

The last week or so has been an interesting time for me. I’ve actually left my house for not one, not two, but damn near three socials events of some sort or another. This is very close to being a new record for me (at least, within the last year). Give me some sort of applause or something. In related news, I look good, and whatever I’ve been doing is working. Or so I’m told. And if only people would let this information die a swift death.

I’ve been a fairly big fan of The Shack for my gaming news and nerdy socialization over the last year or so, and now I’m becoming subject to a special phenomenon known as Shack Hype. In particular, the Nintendo DS has been a big contender in the Shack Hype Arena over the last few months — something that came as far more than a mere surprise to me. I had always simply assumed that the DS was nothing more than a cheap gimmick that would fade from the public eye in a way that would even make the VirtualBoy shudder. I can safely say, especially with the recent releases of Animal Crossing: Wild World, Mario Kart DS, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time, and Nintendogs that I was gravely mistaken in this manner, and plan to remedy my lack of ownership in this arena as soon as my budget allows.

As far as music is concerned, my recent obsession with early 90’s tunes has led me in the direction of Live - Throwing Copper. How in the hell did I miss this album all these years? I vaguely remember the cover art from years past in places I’d rather not be able to recall with such precision, but other than that, this album has gone largely unnoticed by me until recently. Thankfully this has been remedied and I consider myself a far better person for the discovery.

Hobbes is growing up all nice and feisty-like. He’s been far more demanding of my attention lately, and if I fail to take notice of his ever-so-subtle hints he will then proceed to do something not-so-subtle. Like climbing up my legs or jumping on my keyboard. It really is an awesome feeling having a cat around at all times. Sometimes I get to wake up to him curled up in a ball near my chest in the morning, his little purr-machine running at full blast. Then there are other times, such as seconds ago when I spill water all over my desk and he acts as an all-in-one cleanup crew. I really want to get some of the new pictures of the little guy up, but they’re just going to have to wait until I get home in little more than a week, as I seem to have misplaced my camera cable.

Also, just as a point of interest: I received my first piece of creepy fan mail yesterday. It’s a milestone worth noting, to be sure.

Seems like a good place to stop. <3 you all, and so forth.

You’re, essentially, looking at a new and improved Polycat.net at this very moment. If this thought frightens you to your very core, then I apologize, but I’m not moved. It’s more of a half-hearted apology akin to the one you’d give your best friend after he had just found out his girlfriend was cheating on him, while keeping the knowledge that you were the other guy to yourself all along. That’s the kind of apology we’re talking here.

So today is Tuesday. Also known as the day where me and my two super-duper cohorts — well, one cohort, and one pick-up guy who we just brought along to play bass in this metaphorical musical of … men? — are due to perform a skit in front of a class of eager, bright-eyed little freshmen in our Spanish 101 class. Let’s just ignore the fact that I’m a junior taking a pre-freshman class for a moment and focus on the far more important issue which hangs above my two amigos and myself: the fact that we have to perform a skit in front of people for what needs to last at least six minutes despite us only having enough material for three. Yes. It’s a pickle, I know. Thankfully you all have my inner saint to thank for uploading a copy of the Spanglish manuscript for your little budding eyes to peep all over. Notice my clever usage of Spanglish as a hint-hint-wink-wink-nudge-nudge to the fact that the script is a kind of abomination of Spanish, English, and Make-Believe all-in-one.

Yes, yes. I’m a talentless hack — I’m well aware of this fact.

It’s not often that I actually devote time and energy in an entry to spew the joys of some sort of music that I believe you, being my faithful and loyal reader base, should have some kind of knowledge of. This is why I have created the beautiful little end-post lyrical doo-dad where I pick a small lyrical excerpt of a song I’m listening to and, if the sentence or fragment appeals to you, then you can take your little mousey-wousey and hover over that text to learn about the Band - Song Title of the text! Fascinating little development, I thought. This new-ish uber feature of Polycat.net aside, I must lay down a mandate-esque command for you to listen to Iron & Wine and Calexico. These bands (along with their collaboration project) can currently be heard playing in my ever-so-warm and dimly lit room at damn near any moment ’round the clock. The loving tunes of these musical miscreants makes me happy in my bathing suit area. Yes — it’s just that good.

I’d also like to take this moment to point you fine folk to the recent site improvements which have taken place under your ever-watchful eye. Firstly, I added a purdy little randomly displayed piece of text (drawn from a text file of magic and wonder which is ever-so-frequently updated) to the upper-left corner of the site header. I thought it added that extra bit of flair which I ever-so-desperately needed for the good of all things Polycat-related. I also gave into some sort of consumer whore-ishness and submitted this site to all sorts of blog-o-matic mechanisms as to increase my reader base. So if, per some freak incident, the site faces a sudden invasion of wild bandits and gypsies, this may be the reason. You can see some of the added blog-o-matician links in the bottom component of the right sidebar.

And for a complete three-sixty whirlwind change in topics, I’d like to say a couple things about me. You see, every entry is really just a thin façade to cover the fact that it’s all about me, me, me. If you’re reading these updates as anything but a tribute to my megalomania then I’d say we have a problem worth discussing over coffee.

Anyway, about me. For whatever reason, people think that I’m a very outgoing person, and if I display some kind of aversion to speaking, then it’s my making some kind of negative statement on my surrounding. Generally, and I say this in such a way that you can write it down on a stone tablet and take it as law, if I show some kind of aversion to speaking, it’s because I’m shy or because I had just gotten out of bed moments ago and have not yet ingested caffeine in any form whatsoever. Generally, though, you cannot take my fear of speaking in public places as some kind of personal shot against your character. Believe me — if I have something to say, I generally say it (unless it fails the test for Is This Upcoming Statement Too Mean, in which case I refrain if it involves people who have not mortally wronged me in some past occurrence). This is really just a roundabout way of my declaring my interest in a girl who won’t ever read this… And even if she did, would probably have no idea that it’s referring to her.

It’s a shame that we have such an overabundance of the use of superpatheticintrovert as an adjective, because it’s really times like these where its use loses much of its originally-intended meaning.

That last sentence functions as a perfect epilogue to a beautiful personal piece entitled My Life As a Bachelor as well as a brilliant transition into the site that, essentially, wrote the sentence in the first place: What Would Tyler Durden Do? is a site about all the glitz and glamour to be found in Hollywood that covers the — ahem — news with such an entertaining style that it’s not only worth reading, it’s worth reading. I would also now like to throw out a quick plug to other deserving reads: Explosm, A Softer World, Some Prepared Remarks, and the ever-popular Polycat.net. I’m so subtle that it hurts. Really.

Audioscrobbler for the win, yo.

Having officially ended my sophomore year at the University of Michigan, and I can now safely say something which I’ve “hinted” at a number of times throughout the year: this year was horrible. And I don’t just mean any “damn, that class was hard” horrible, I mean the kind of “horrible” you come to define when your entire family dies from a nuclear explosion, yet somehow you survive with an illness which slowly makes every hair of your body turn into acid and slowly creep down into your organs, taking years to properly decay, but with a pain that increased two-fold every hour until the day you die. That kind of horrible; minus the physical pain, but with all the mental anguish.

Seriously, if I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be itI would say that, other than your first year where you don’t really have a choice, do not ever choose a roommate if you even moderately dislike him/her. I didn’t really know my roommate this year all that well (nor did I choose him, I kind of got forced into the situation), but I knew I didn’t like the guy. He reminds me of my biological dad, and I hate him; therefore, if someone reminds me of him, I’m more likely to jump up and down angrily and punch things at the thought than I am to want to give gifts. Unless they’re gifts of pain. Throughout the year, I can think of about three, maybe four, situations where I didn’t have the urge to punch him in the face (an urge that I only acted on once, I’m proud to say). And of this near-handful of situations, I think there was only a single instance where I wasn’t drunk or high. He was a horrible person, a typical unintelligent, nerdy, completely awkward, egomaniacal elitist, and I’m thinking of going back to religion just so that I can just pray that he ends up a homeless bum who can only get off by killing a pack of puppies. Then I remember that God doesn’t generally do things like that for his followers and I decide to stay the way I am.

I did see Mitch Hedberg, Stephen Lynch, Lucky Boys Confusion, and Reel Big Fish live, and they were good. Very good.

I did not fall in love, I did not even go any “hot dates,” and I hardly met anyone that caught my attention at all. Well, I should probably clear up a slight stipulation to that second point, as I did go on a sort of “date.” Though, by that, I essentially mean that I went out to dinner with an ex-girlfriend, thought about another girl the entire time, and listened to an hour or so of what may have been the most painful conversation ever; at one point, I seriously considered calling my mom, then having her wait a few minutes and then call my cell phone to feign an emergency (I actually spelled “immature” the first time, never had a written Freudian slip) so that I would be forced to leave. Then I came back, and made a ridiculously spicy dish for myself (We were at Mongolian Barbeque) so that I wouldn’t have to talk so much since the food made my brain melt. I could clarify the last point on that initial list as well, but… well, no.

Classes were actually one of the year’s high points. I took an excellent class in Creative Writing (English 223), that was absolutely painful through the first half of the semester, but took a nice turn when we got the story-writing half of the class. I wrote three stories (A Brown-Haired Girl, Jack and Jill, and Retribution), which received massive praise and lifted my self-confidence for a few seconds each. Which is no mild feat, mind you. I also took a class in the literature of Chicago, which I really enjoyed. Last semester, I ended with three B’s and a C; this semester, I’m thinking about 2 A’s and a C. Then I get to take classes all spring, summer, and fall. And winter too, but that’s far away. And cold.

This is also the year that I managed to be completely unproductive when I wasn’t doing homework. Last year I still programmed on the side, but the amount that I did was definitely reduced from the stuff I did in High School, this year I had a week or two where I was really adamant about working on a programming project, but that’s about it. I don’t really think it’s that I enjoy it any less than I did in High School, but by the time I’m done doing all my homework (which I still do the bare minimum of), I don’t feel like reading and thinking a lot, I just feel like gaming, hanging out with my friends, or working out. Speaking of gaming, my Counter-Strike clan is doing TWL, and we’re doing pretty well. And speaking of working out, I’ve lost about 10-15 pounds in the last month or so, and have been running five-six days a week, and lifting just as many. I feel so lazy by taking the week off while I’m home (mostly because I have no idea where a gym is that I can use; it’s not a big place), makes kitty cry.

One thing I really hope for this summer, and I do so love summer, is that my “romantic” life gets a bit of a boost. It’s really mostly my fault, since I occasionally see instances where I should do the flirting thing, or the introducing myself thing, but I just don’t. I’ve become almost too shy for my own good since I’ve gotten to college, and I simply can’t get out of this funk. If I’m introduced to a girl by my friend, or someone brings them over, I can act normally, but for some reason I just can’t break my own shackles of introversion when it comes to parties, classrooms, or what have you.

Summary:
Best Band: Sister Hazel.
Best Song: Howie Day - Collide.
Best Movie: The Boondock Saints
Best TV Show: House.
Best Games: Counter-Strike: Source, God of War, Halo 2, and Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne.