Epiphany

Last night, while I was really REALLY high, I had a religious epiphany. For whatever reason, I was thinking about it, and about how stupid religion is, then I realized: it's not for me to say what people should or should not believe--thinking that makes me no better than those bitch-ass Evangelists. I realized that it is up to each individual to decide how spiritual he or she is, and for that individual to conjure whatever god or force that works for them. Nobody should try to push their religion onto someone else, and people shouldn't collaborate as a group and decide what the right god is. Organized religion is a vile conception, not religion.

Since Nick left The Ranch, and I will as well in just a number of days, it seems as though the blog fades with our wonderful legacy. Even though I was primarily the only one posting, it was still a lot of fun, and I liked having people read my shit. I will be writing in a new blog soon, the address being http://intoxicatedturtlefetus.blogspot.com. Nothing's up as of right now, but that will change soon.

So, I guess this is goodbye, Ranch. It was fun, and I will most likely look back upon these posts with fond feelings.

So long to the ranch

So it' been a fun couple of quarters, but the Ranch lost a member last Friday. Me. I've decided that 5 quarters in the dorms is 5 too many. I had a really good time this year hanging out with all you other ranch hands, but shit...now I can play music at 2 in the morning! Seriously! How awesome is it that we can use the drum set after midnight. And drink wine all the time. It's pretty sick really. You should come check it out. We make music in the basement and don't have any furniture. AND there's no prayer flags! So, I'm off to Readen, my new home. It's at 1017 Jersey St. You should come over some time.

Nick out. (For good?)

Losing Shit

So you know you get high too much when you start losing shit.

I can't seem to find my big black coat, and it's got me in quite a frazzle. If I see anyone wearing it in Fairhaven, I will beat them up and take it.

...I hope whoever has my coat isn't big.

A friend introduced me to this guy's site. While the concept of a moving head with a bunch of links is really cool, it's kind of a douchebag move to have your face plastered all over your site, even if it is your personal site (which is kind of douchebaggy in and of itself; if you're really important, someone will make a wikipedia article about you). I especially can't stand pictures like this or this. It's kind of like, "Look into my deep eyes. I am so deep." And the second one is even worse: "I love children, and they follow me. I am a child lover."

His poetry is tight, though. Like this one. The ending is the best part.

While I was doing research for my Comm 101 speech, I came across some interesting studies. Namely, this one. According to this report, file sharing will eventually lead to the downfall of the "superstar phenomenon." This is bitchin', because superstars suck pretty bad for the most part--as people and as writers/singers. The idea behind the study is that the ability to download music freely, sample all sorts of tunes, and pay for what you like will lead to an economic system in which consumers pay for the music they like, which makes the artists money based on the worth of their actual music, and not their superstar status. It's actually kind of sad to think that we even have a superstar phenomenon in the first place. America!

Moving off-campus will be great, speaking of file sharing, because I'll have reliable internet access, in which I can use newsgroups whenever I like. As of right now, I can only download in the morning hours, as every other time the bandwidth is being consumed by greedy students doing research and homework. Dumb. I want to be able to download high-definition, DVD-quality porn at 4 in the afternoon, regardless of how many people could be using that bandwidth for non-ejaculating reasons.

The Girl Behind Me In Math

So I love Math 112, first of all. It's helped me realize that I'm not totally retarded when it comes to math, and that's pretty sick. My professor is a great teacher, and he's really funny and weird (in a good way). However, every class has "one of those" students.

You know the type. The one who makes it difficult to move past a subject by asking questions and then disputing the prof's answers to said questions. The one who asks, "So could you give me an example of what we'd use this [anything math-related] for?" The one who can't follow along worth a shit and tries to make it look like it's the prof's fault. The one who wears shorts that cling to her ass and cut off at about the end of the cheek in the middle of fucking February. Yeah, you know the type.

Good news is, the prof is so quick on his feet and with his tongue, he's able to pretty much end up on top in any encounter. Sometimes he even makes the lady behind me look really dumb (unintentionally, I assure you--he's just that good), which reminds me of the scene in the movies where the nerdy kid is getting threatened by some punk who has all his friends backing him up with their guffaws and shouts, and he says some witty quip that makes the bully look like a retarded bitch. It's awesome.

So here's to you, Bitch Who Sits Behind Me in Math: for every obtuse word you manage to shit out your mouth.

The Ranch Will Be Under New Maintenance (just the room)

Well, Brita and I found an apartment that looks really kick-ass, and if we act fast, we'll be living together next quarter in Inglewood Apartments. That's pretty tight, since the food here at school makes me envy anorexics who somehow don't get hungry. Seriously, after one and a half years of university dining hall food, I'm ready to leave.

Nick's trying to leave too, and I hope he does, because I can only imagine how shitty it would be to live in the same room with someone other than me. Say goodbye to masturbating at our computers while the other one of us thinks we aren't.

Playing D&D again. It's sick. There's some lizardfolk in this game, and some dungeon-crawling, but I have big plans for the plot. Speaking of D&D, that's another great reason to look forward to having an apartment. When we have our own place to live, we can host D&D games without being distracted by the myriad folk who jostle into the Stack 9 lounge, "Oh, hey guys, whatcha doin'? D&D?! That's so tight. I wanna play." I don't know, maybe I'm just a douche-and-a-half, but I don't enjoy the game constantly getting interrupted by outsiders. If I'm in the middle of describing the finer details of the fog-covered bone field--the earth beneath smothered by hundreds of corpses, the restless souls roaming the area almost palpable in the dank, dark valley of death--I don't want the players to get distracted by talk of b-ball and last night's hookup.

So that's another thing to look forward to. Man, I love D&D. Can't wait to go home for the summer and play with my homies. I'm talking about you, James and Gibson. We have campaigns to finish, which involve playing every night for long hours, regardless of social needs and occupational obligations.

I let myself actually get distracted from preparing for tomorrow's D&D game in order to write a long-overdue blog post. My writing abilities wain and quiver weakly as I neglect them, neither writing a journal nor creative works. Maybe I should take a cue from Derek and take some more writing classes. I find myself much more creative when my grade depends on it.

Look at me talk on and on about myself in my own blog post--what an asshole I can be. I'll end this post so I don't have to wing it tomorrow during the game, and so you can get on with your life, hypothetical reader.

Reinvisioned

The frail dinosaur lurched, its knees giving way as he ejaculated red ooze from his swollen mouth. The moist earth beneath him felt soft, like wet satin, or a pillowy cloud. "So this is what it means to die," thought the dinosaur. Its pale green skin was slick with perspiration, no longer the leathery hide it once was--clean, majestic, and honorable--no, now it was but a hardened suit of jade armor, cracked and split by toils of war.

Its heart pounded furiously, blood surging through the small dinosaur's body, his entire body pulsing with fatigue. "I can't go on," the beast thought, its eyes bleary, its assailant a smudged red blur against the horizon. He could feel it mocking him, roaring its war cry. "Why isn't he helping me?" the dinosaur thought. "Why doesn't he do something?"

Behind him, a man shouted, but the dinosaur couldn't hear. The blood rushing through its head deafened him to everything but his racing heart. In its last seconds, the creature closed its weary eyes, resting its head on the soft, satin grass.

---

"Aw, horse shit. Come back, Bulbasaur. Good fight, Gary, looks like you beat me though."

"Dude, is your pokémon alright? It looks kind of tired."

"Yeah, it's cool. I'll just revive him at the Pokécenter, then it's back to battling. Lather, rinse, repeat."

"Totally."

Pilobolus

I went and saw a cool dance performance thing last night at the Mt Baker Theatre. It's a show called Pilobolus, and--essentially--it was a hybrid between modern dance and acrobatics. Pretty sick shit.

The program for the show quoted the director (or someone) as saying that the audience shouldn't worry about what the "symbolism" is, and should just enjoy the show. The first act started with a couple people sitting in a crude circle of chairs, all faced towards the center. Many chairs were empty, there were probably a dozen chairs with only six occupied. The "music" started, at first just ocean waves and creaking. The image I gathered in my mind was that we were supposed to be on a ship. The noise of a few drops of water echoed throughout the large theatre, and the actors jumped to life, jerking, and slowly building up speed as the noises turned to music. Before I knew it, they were swinging off of each other's arms, doing flips and all sorts of shit. It seemed to be comprised of four men and two women. The men performed lots of tricks and didn't seem to rely on each other in particular, however, the two women danced as though the two were one unit. They used each others' strength to do all the neat stunts and flips, and together created a perfect synergy. It was very cool.

The act only got better. At one point, everyone slowed down and didn't do a whole lot while one of the guys in the center of the stage sat down and began to spin a chair on one of its legs. Again, he started slowly, but began to build up to an amazing speed, and then slowed back down, and the chair fell silently back to its original position. Sick. After this, all the other actors proceded to pile chairs on top of this dude, and then all but one collapsed onto the pile. The guy who I assumed to be the "traveler," as he had a suitcase pulled a large fabric sheet out of it and somehow got it to act as a projection screen, blocking the view of the pile of chairs from the audience. This was done so discretely and mysteriously, with only hands holding the sheet up from behind. A short video thing was projected onto the screen, and afterward, the sheet was packed up again, and all the actors on top of the pile were gone.

In the next segment, the man beneath all the chairs (probably 8 chairs) began to move, and eventually stood as a figure constructed entirely of chairs. He looked kind of like a golem, his movements sluggish as he lurched to the music towards the female actresses sitting down. This chair-creature appeared to be in pain, with a limp leg, and shuffled so slowly. It took him a good while to make it ten feet across stage, and he collapsed before he reached them.

After this, all the chairs were (and this is all coreographed so it looks dope-fly-word) taken off the dude and spun around and put in a row. At this time, the music took a turn for the slow, minimalistic melody, a few keys on the piano (or chimes, or something, I couldn't tell). One of the women who the golem had inched towards was now limp on the chair, her female partner on the other side of the stage, dancing (acrobatically) with the dudes. She then climbed on top of the chair-guy, perched on him in such a way that only ripped-ass motherfuckers could even hold that pose (both the guy and the girl). The guy is kind of hunched over still, and he steps atop one side of the row of chairs. He begins to step in time with the music, one foot to one chair. As he did this, a sort of assembly line took place, as one guy grabbed the last chair in the row, tossed it like it was a lawn chair (it was certainly not) to another guy, and that guy slid the chair to another guy at the front of the flow of chairs. It resembled a Super Mario World block gimmick.

So here we've got a guy hunched over with a woman precariously slung across his back, tiptoe-ing in time with sad music, while three guys create the pathway the hunchback is walking on. Here's the kicker. During this, the girl who sat limp at her chair, tried to make her way towards her female counterpart. As soon as she slid off of the chair, however, her legs split, and she looked helpless, unable to lift herself up. She resembled perfectly, in my mind, a doll. The hunchback continued to tiptoe across the stream of chairs, carrying with him the other female. During this entire thing, the doll struggles to crawl across the stage, ignoring the futility of her actions. She persevered, and collapsed, but continued to inch towards the center of the stage. However, after another collapse, she struggled slightly, and ceased to move.

It was beautiful. I was on the brink of tears throughout the last half of the doll-hunchback sequence. I couldn't believe it--how powerful this performance was, evoking such immense sadness from within me. My heart broke with every single note in the somber melody, every time the doll failed to stand. I didn't think any kind of entertainment would ever make me feel like I did then.

The curtains fell, and after a pause, the next act started, different song, different mood. I quickly regained my composure, and enjoyed the rest of the show, which wasn't nearly as sad, but still great.

It's things like Pilobolus that make me love the arts. I always forget how much better a dance performance or play is than television or movies. "How much better?" you ask? Infinitely better. Anything having to do with the arts is infinitely better in every way than television.