Alright, sorry kids. Put down the pitchforks, torches, and hostage kittens. I had been doing so well updating this thing with consistency every 3-4 days, and then I go and so something brash like not updating it in a week. Apologies. Apologies all around.

I came home-home on Monday and, to be quite honest, I do so love coming home. I don’t really do anything other than just hang around with my family, watch TV at night, and then retreat to the room that I spent so many hours in while growing up once the rest of the family goes to sleep at an oh-so-early hour. It’s just, primarily, the fact that I’m home that’s so comforting and super fantastic. I have a bunch of the pictures of the house, something that I never had thought about getting before, on my lovely little digital camera. These shall get uploaded and displayed for all to see when I get back to Ann Arbor on Sunday and get the cord that my camera just begs and pleads to have in order to fulfill its function. I also got to play basketball outside on our little cement slab in front of our garage today and yesterday, which is another thing I’ve missed being able to do just whenever.

As much as I love being home though, I’m actually kinda looking forward to getting back to Ann Arbor for my summer “vacation.” And, by vacation, I mean spring and summer classes which will take all but three or four weeks of my actual summer vacation up. Spring term, in particular, will be quite the little bitch as I’m taking a class which contains the word “Intensive” in its title. Now, spring/summer classes in general are pretty rough in that they have to get an entire curriculum done in half the time that a normal term class has to. In spring, I’m taking Intensive Second-Year Spanish. What this means is that not only am I taking a Spanish class at twice the speed of a normal term of classes, but I’m taking a class that is twice the speed of a normal Spanish class during the regular school semester. So, let’s do the math: one class at about four times the speed that it could normally be taken. Honestly, though, the only thing that really irks me about this whole setup isn’t the four of class four days a week, but rather than the damn thing starts at 8:30am every day. I haven’t had to wake up before 8:00am as a routine since my junior year of High School. This makes me, a person with admittedly trying sleeping issues, a very, very sadpanda. Oh well; it’s only six-seven weeks of this thing. I can do it.

Plus, and this is just what I’m hearing from a little birdie who heard it from grape vine, I think this summer is going to be one of the bestest ever. My reasons are super-secret — and to follow the old cliché: if I told you, I’d have to kill you — but let’s just trust me on this. I think it’ll be pretty spectacular.

Oh, and hey, a friend urged me in the direction of GameDev.net’s Image of the Day (IOTD) saying that the queue for the future was feeling a bit lonely, so I went ahead and submitted my last known project as a programmer to the thing. Check it out if you feel so inclined.

I started up work on the third chapter for Paradise a couple of days ago, and while I was talking to one of my friends I had the whole chapter appear before my eyes in a startling flash of revelationary light. This chapter is the point in which the real plotline of the book begins to take form. It’s also the point in which I inject some romance by finally fleshing out the relationship between the main character and his, presumably, dead wife. The first three page draft I wrote for the chapter’s flashback was, at the time, decent… But when I looked back at the thing I was simply revolted by how bad it was. I’m keeping the same general structure of the flashback, but I think the newly rewritten draft is most definitely superior to the bastard first draft. I’m stuck on a very crucial paragraph of said flashback at the moment, but as soon as that’s done I think the rest of the sequence will come together very nicely. I’ll post snippets and such at the appropriate temporal juncture.

Since I have a tendency to give my one-sentence movie reviews after I’ve watched a large amount of movies in a fairly short time I might as well make it more of a habit. So here are all the movie-viewing occasions which I have partaken in over the last two-three weeks. There’s a lot and in roughly the order in which I watched them. eXistenZ was positively captivating which left my mind reeling by the time its ninety-seven minutes of film had come to a conclusion. Videodrome was, uh, well it was a weird damn movie; I’m not really sure what else to say. Do not watch Spider unless you like watching Ralph Fiennes mumble and stumble for almost one-hundred minutes — I truly believe that the script for the movie was, at most, four pages long. Silent Hill was bad, long, but very enjoyable for me. Jacob’s Ladder is a fantastic movie along the lines of The Sixth Sense, but which remains far more interesting throughout while ending with a bit of a whimper whereas Shyamalan’s movie is very slow-developed buildup which ends with a bang. Hostel was less “revolting” than I had been lead to believe, but a far more enjoyable movie at the same time. The Grudge was a very faithful recreating of its Ju-on, which I, overall, enjoyed more than the Japanese original. And, to end this very long paragraph, Love, Actually was the single most fun movie I’ve seen in a very long time.

Alright, next time I’m just going to do these one-sentence reviews as I see the movies, rather than letting a large-ass list slowly build and build until it nears its breaking point. Unfortunately, I’m now at the end of the very long list of movies that I’d been waiting to see for such a long time. I think Blue Velvet is one of the few remaining titles that I have but have not yet seen. And I don’t care how batshit crazy Tom Cruise may be, I’m still looking forward to seeing Mission Impossible III on Friday.

I’d also like to point that, while I still have yet to get a grade for the last of my four classes, I’m currently sitting at a 3.554 GPA for the last semester. I was an absolutely horrible student for my first three semesters here at the University of Michigan, but I’m very slowly starting to come around. This will be the best semester I’ve had yet with two A-’s and a B+. I’ll update this paragraph as soon as I get the last grade to see if I’ve set a new academic record for my time at U of M.

I’m a big fan of the whole idea of keeping some semblance of structure in terms of the structure of yearly posts. So this is, for most intents and purposes, the 2005-2006 version of the “end of the year” post (done with similar intentions, though mostly likely a completely unique execution) that I did last year. I have yet to officially end this, my junior year at the University of Michigan, but with only a handful of days left before I go home for the week-long separation between winter and spring semester, I figure now is as good a time as any to really celebrate the occasion. Today is, after all, the final day of classes. I do still have one exam left but, for the most part, I’m not particularly worried about it in any way, shape, or form. This is a confidence which I will, most likely, regret a few days from now.

Oh well. Live and learn. Or so I’m told. I always forget one of those in actually practicing that motto.

Anyway, honestly, I can hardly believe that this year has actually been this year. Such a sentence may make absolutely no sense when read, but lemme tell you: when I wrote that, it totally spoke to me. That is to say that this year went by all sorts of quickfast-like. I’m honestly sitting here, in my room, at 3:16am, listening to Tool and thinking: Wow, this year went by all sorts of fast. I’m having difficulties realizing that memories which seem not-so-distant actually took place more than four months ago at the very beginning of this semester. Perhaps this is just what growing old feels like… But, if that’s the case, I’m beginning to see why all the old people — er, now it’s more like my temporal colleagues, I suppose — always say that something felt “just like yesterday.” Granted, I’m not quite to the point where things feel like yesterday… But more like things felt like not quite as long as they actually were. I really wish I could think of a snappier way to phrase all this, but this is more of a semi-alcohol-induced rambling entry than any kind of memorable… memoir. So it’s, essentially, in the same vein of entry as the last few have been. Enjoyable, to be sure. At least for me.

If nothing else the fact that I was able to get fairly drunk with one of my classes and teacher is reason enough for putting this year up upon a prized pedestal. This is actually one of the classes that I can safely say I will miss not having in the future. I had awesome classmates, fantastic teacher, and just a generally good time despite the fact that the class had a three-hour meeting period — which is a long time for someone who has a hard time sitting still through even the most entertaining of movies at a theater.

This year also is a first in that it is the first time that I have ever been entrusted with the sole responsibility of taking care of a living, breathing thing. I mean, sure, I’ve had pets before… But they were co-entrusted to members of my immediate family who were, at times, far more instrumental in their upraising than I was. Either way, I’d like to think that this little guy was raised pretty well thus far. He’s still alive… And despite any claims that he may be slightly “off” (I think ‘retarded’ is generally the word of choice to describe him) and may, in fact, be just as insecure as a kitten as I am as a person, I think he’s a pretty awesome little companionthing.

I think this is also the year in which I really realized what I wanted to do with my life. Four years ago, I would’ve said the whole game programming thing was a sure-fire path. There was nothing, at the time, which could stray me from this goal. Until I actually got to a point where it was a viable option — then it was simply thrown right out of the contending fields of interest. It took time, though. I eventually decided (mostly on a whim) that I was going to “simply” dual-major in Computer Science and English, a natural combination to be sure. At the midpoint of last semester, though, I decided that Computer Science had really lost its luster in my eyes. So, with that decision, I became set on the idea of becoming a High School teacher. Coincidentally, my projected future income took a huge drop with this choice — but that’s okay. I do plan to continue writing throughout my life. Maybe the novelist in me will eventually make it big, famous, and all sorts of popular and I can start selling out to write made-for-TV movies and the like.

Ah, my aspirations are simply endless.

Alright, that’s about it. I feel vindicated in my obligation to be nostalgic. That’s good enough, I suppose. Now for the summary:
Best Band(s): Joshua Radin, Sufjan Stevens, or Iron & Wine.
Best Song: Sufjan Stevens - For the Widows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti.
Best Movie: Serenity.
Best TV Show: Arrested Development.
Best Games: Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne, Counter-Strike: Source, Guild Wars

I had a nice, mildly lengthy entry dedicated to the “end of the year,” which is to say the end of the school year. Which it is for me. But the entry… Well, to be honest, it was pretty horrendous. I actually deleted it after I had posted it because I felt that it didn’t live up to the standards which I, myself, have established for entries on this site. And I’m not going to lie to you: the bar is pretty low. So when I say that an entry is bad I mean that it’s really bad. I’ll give it another go in a few days, though. Maybe when the end of the year has actually been reached; so, say, Monday night.

That all said, I did have a nice, productive night of writing on the little project I call Paradise. I went through the first chapter and made some really minor corrections from the last major version, which is all well and good I suppose. The second chapter had a fairly major update at the beginning of the month, so I wasn’t too keen on the idea of revising it further at this point in time. So I didn’t. I did, however, completely rewrite the introduction to the book… A process I enjoyed immensely. Since it’s not very long, I figure I’ll post it all here. Since I love you all and want you all to read my lovechild so very, very much. Enjoy. Or something.

“I love the smell of napalm in the morn—.”

Dillon lifted his finger off of the soft power button on the remote control and tossed it back onto the couch cushion where he had found it. He turned around and walked over to the kitchen table where four plates had been set for him and his family. As he walked to his chair, he stepped on a worn dog bone which had been lying right next to one of the legs of the table. He kicked it out of the way and sat down at the table, directly across from his younger sister Sara, who smiled at him.

“Alright kids, now this is what Thanksgiving is all about,” his father said, putting a large, silver covered tray in the middle of the table.

“My teacher said it was about appreciating family bonds,” Sara said, correcting her father.

“No, Sara, it’s more about how we killed Indians—”

“Native Americans,” his mother corrected as she sat down at the table.

“Yeah, them. Well, we killed them. And took their land. And called it America. And now we live here,” Dillon said, grinning.

His father slapped him across the back of the head with the cup of his hairy hand. He then took the large, reflective silver top off its tray and revealed to the family the golden brown skin of the turkey. The steam rose up into the chandelier over the table.

Dillon watched as his father made slices into the turkey. The metal of the cutting knife refracted the light from the sun outside into the teenage boy’s eyes as his father set pieces of sliced white meat along the sides of the tray. Dillon pet the head of the dog who had come up to him and rested his graying muzzle on his lap.

A moment later, the dog let out a high-pitched yelp — unprompted, as far as the boy knew. He looked over to his sister, as if to see if she was the cause of it, but she looked at him with surprise. And then the boy saw a large flash of light out of the corner of his eyes. He recoiled at the searing pain of the light and felt, for an instant, a bitter metallic taste in his mouth. He opened his eyes and saw his father still cutting the turkey, the sound of the knife scraping against the surface of the tray filled the dining room. The boy looked, once again, at the windows outside and felt his eyes widened. His mind went blank as he stared, jaw-gaping, through the window over Sara’s shoulder.

All that Dillon could really notice through the window was a tidal wave of debris coming straight for him. His legs refused to move and he couldn’t find the words to say anything to his family, who were talking about the well-cooked turkey. He gasped as the wall of stone, dirt, and pieces of metal and covered the entire visible landscape through the window. As the wall in front of him was crushed from the unstoppable wave — the glass of the windows shattering and getting sucked into the vortex of refuse with ease — the boy wondered why he wasn’t seeing his life flash before his eyes. In the milliseconds before his death he had expected a wave of soothing memories to overtake him… And yet, he thought, it never came.

Dillon’s last thought was that death was a real letdown.

As usual, this thing and more can be found here: http://www.polycat.net/fiction.

Sometimes, late at night, I feel this urge to, say, write an entry of some sorts for a site somewhere. Tonight, that happens to be the case. I can’t say, specifically, what created this unique feeling in me… But I’m guessing it has something to do with chips and salsa and beer… Yeah, that sounds about right. I don’t really have anything to really write about, to be honest. Though let’s not kid ourselves here: it’s not like I ever do.

The Internet is truly a wonderful place. It is a locale filled with gushing waterfalls, fields of wheat singing hymnals to Mother Nature, unicorn farts and so on. And it all sounds nice, to be sure, but I’m really starting to firmly believe that this Internet of myth is most definitely not the one I’m currently using right now. I say this with the knowledge that I just watched five hundred and sixty five e-mails flood into one of my inboxes and not a single one was actually any sort of important. The fun thing is that there were about 181 e-mails that got considered “junk mail.” At some point I realized that Outlook is just a big, big piece of crap. <3 Gmail.

Just as an unrelated side-note: thanks to all the people who expressed concern over a certain insomniac state. I did, in fact, get to sleep immediately after I submitted that entry and jumped in bed. Waking up the next morning and realizing that I was, for lack of a better phrase, waking the hell up. This is most likely an event which can’t be relished by a whole ton of people, but for those precious few of us who few sleeping as a task rather than a gift… It’s pretty much the greatest thing in the world.

If raising an animal is anything like raising a child then I am officially going to just avoid that little facet of my journey through life. I feel I’ve done a good job raising little cat (his official name is “Hobbes,” but I certainly never call him that — usually it’s “Buddy” or “Cat”). I’m a fairly responsible person, so his feline needs are always met, and he certainly gets an abundance of attention. That all said, I think I went wrong somewhere. For starters, we have the litter naps. Then, of course, there’s the inability to distinguish real from not-so-real. There’s his affinity for crawling in very unique/uncommon places. To add to this list without the proof of a picture, he has a habit of hating to not be with me in a bathroom. When I take a shower in the morning, he paws and meows loudly at the door. If I, say, don’t lock the door (though I shut it) while I’m washing my hands or some such, he’ll push the door open and lie down next to my feet. Then again, while still odd, the fact that he tries to pet my face while I pet him is kind of a cute thing. I guess? I’m hoping I’m not necessarily alone in this kind of thing, but as the days progress, and little Cat gets older and older… I find myself becoming increasingly skeptical about that hope.

I’m on a roll with pictures here, so here are two ridiculously cute things: bunny and mousething. I find the whole big, empty black eye thing really neat. Some find it creepy. If you happen to find yourself in that latter category then I highly suggest you also find yourself a soul. Preferably one with taste and emotion.

So, I realize that kind of, you know, turning all of my previous future plans way the hell around a year or so ago was kind of an interesting decision. I am referring to my switch from the Computer Science/Programming stuff to, oh you know, English/Teaching stuff. It’s not like I was necessarily all that invested in the programming stuff; I really didn’t have all that much backing me up or anything… But I still feel that it’s pretty much one of the better decisions I’ve ever made. Sure it’s easy to say that now, you say, it’s not like you’ve actually had to head out into the real world and bring home the metaphorical bacon to your starving children and anorexic puppy. And, yes, that’s absolutely true. I’m fairly certain that I’m going to have some difficulty actually getting into a teaching job somewhere after college, but that’s all well and planned for at this point. There’s also the possibility that I’ll write something that will make a famous person want to give me large amounts of money that will help me until I land the high school teaching job of my dreams.

Can’t say I’m really counting on that last part.

Honestly, though, getting out of programming has had a fairly tremendous impact on me. I feel like a completely different person than I was two years ago, both mentally and physically. I actually enjoy doing a majority of my homework and going to my classes. I enjoy reading, writing, writing about reading, and reading about writing. And I’m filled with far more excitement than I should be about the mere idea that five years from now I may very well be teaching a classroom about something. Preferably Lord of the Flies and having them enact their favorite scene from the book or something. I think it’s safe to say that, in this hypothetical future, I’m going to have to mandate a pre-emptive ban on the whole “Piggy, meet this gigantic boulder” scene.

For those of you who have yet to heed my recommendations for Arrested Development, maybe this clip will change your mind. Such an awesome show.

On that note, I think I’ll call it an entry and an evening.

So, at this point in time I only have roughly two weeks before I can head home and begin my summer vacation. And a week after that I come back to school — so, yeah, awesome and such. Though, honestly, as much as I don’t really want to do it, school during the summer is actually kind of fun. It’s a lot more “relaxed” than a normal school year and, at least in my experience, the people that stay for summer tend to be a different variety of student. You know — the insane, masochistic variety of student. So, yeah, you know… There’s that.

Anyone who’s anyone knows that, in the past, I have had some mild difficulties with sleeping (to this end, I present exhibits A, B, and C to the audience). Well, these situations tend to surface in spurts and sprees of so many shapes and sizes that it’s simply a show of the sporadic style of my subconscious. Which is to say that this shit follows no pattern. For the last week it has taken the form of a new “low” in the amount of sleep my body can sustain for any segment of time. At this current point in time I believe I have been getting about two hours of sleep per night for the five-six days. And while this was a normal occurrence in June of last summer, I was actually getting a substantial nap (four to six hours) in at some point in the day. I have not been similarly blessed recently… So to say that this has taken some kind of hit against my psyche wouldn’t be too far off the mark.

Also, I figure anyone with a soul should be able to take joy in the extended Firefly “gag reel”; I’ll take whatever I can get with regards to more Firefly/Serenity goodness. I miss the show. Sadpanda.

And while I’m at linking completely unrelated things, here’s a cute little bunny rabbit. Seriously, if that picture doesn’t make your heart go all warm and fuzzy and melty and gooey then you’re pretty much lost.

I’m really running out of ideas for things to continue writing about for this entry, but it’s primarily an exercise in staying awake long enough to the point where I can safely lay down and zonk the hell out for a solid eight hours. At which point I’ll wake up all refreshed-like and continue … Well, I’ll continue. I was really hoping I could figure out a more dramatic way to finish off that thought, but I just failed. All apologies.

Here’s a clicky where you can read Kevin Smith’s account of friend/costar Jason Mewes‘ trials with drugs and the like. This isn’t normally my kind of stuff but it’s written with so much humor and style (despite being a fairly depressing tale) that it’s hard not to enjoy the read. It’s currently in an unfinished state (weighing in at seven parts) but Smith seems to be adding to it frequently. Should reach its conclusion any day now.

Now I’m just grasping at straws. I’ll quit while I’m ahead.