I'll Tell You What A Larsh Is

A while ago, I got it into my head that I wanted to watch Hatching Pete, a recent Disney Channel original movie, namely because Tiffany Thornton is beautiful. A week or so ago, I acquired a copy of this movie and settled in to watch it, and when it was over, I came to a revolutionary conclusion: Hatching Pete is the best Disney Channel original movie ever. I know, I know, you're all scratching your collective head, saying "Huh? How can a movie about a boy in a chicken suit possibly be better than the masterpiece that is High School Musical?" Well you're in luck, because I'm about to tell you just how that's possible.

Just to clear this up, it's not because of Tiffany Thornton (she actually had a rather small part in it overall, and even then I wasn't a fan of her stuck-up cheer captain character, although I wasn't supposed to be, so she did her job adequately). It's actually because of the movie's two largely unknown stars, Jason Dolley and Josie Loren. It's a shame Hatching Pete didn't become the phenomenon that High School Musical did, because I'd love to see more of these two actors in the future. Jason Dolley is more charming as Pete Ivey than Zac Efron is as Troy Bolton (even if Pete Ivey doesn't grow up to become an awesome pastor in central Virginia), and Josie Loren is much more adorable as Pete's initially distant love interest, Angela Morrissey, than Vanessa Hudgens is as Gabriella Montez. There's a natural chemistry between Pete and the Angela, and the progression of their relationship seems a lot less forced than the "love-at-first-sight-that-encounters-a-brief-rocky-patch-three-movies-in-a-row" formula between Troy and Gabriella. Granted, High School Musical had better music (duh), but the character development in Hatching Pete was vastly superior, the story much more compelling, and, to say it again, Jason Dolley put out a great performance.

So what do Zac Efron and Josie Loren have in common, aside from starring in Disney Channel movies? 17 Again! This particular film was recommended to me by none other than our very own Danny Latin... it surprised me that he would actually even want to see it in the first place, since he's not a big Zac Efron fan, but he saw it and told me it was very good. It interested me since I first heard about it, because I do in fact like Zac Efron, but this unexpected endorsement made me want to see it even more. If you've never seen it, think of it as a sort of cross between Freaky Friday, It's A Wonderful Life, and Mrs. Doubtfire. On the surface it looks like your average, fun, body-switching high school flick, but it actually deals with themes deeper than "being yourself" and the other sorts of things that normally drive the plots of films centered around high school. After watching Hatching Pete and learning that Josie Loren plays a good female lead (and is also extraordinarily pretty), I found out that she was also in 17 Again, which bumped it to the top of my "movies to watch" list. Alas, she only had a very small part as the muse of Zac Efron's character's son (played by Sterling Knight), and it didn't do much to show off her acting abilities, but she is basically the epitome of what you'd call "my type," so every scene she was in was a good one anyway. The movie itself was indeed very good, even hilarious at times (the interactions between Zac Efron and Thomas Lennon are a riot, and the latter is just plain funny in his own right throughout the duration of the movie). I'd highly recommend it... and you know if a movie gets an endorsement from both myself AND Danny Latin, it must be pretty friggin good. Incidentally, 17 Again features, as I mentioned earlier, Sterling Knight, who stars on Sonny With A Chance with Tiffany Thornton, who was in Hatching Pete with Josie Loren, which completes the Disney circle by bringing us back to 17 Again (even though it's not a Disney movie). File that under "F" for "Fun Fact".

Last week whilst in the car on the first ever Fast Food World Tour, Chris and I were discussing the nonsensical song "Fireflies" (by Owl City) and its unwarranted popularity. Sure, it's reasonably catchy, but the lyrics may as well be gibberish, and in my opinion, that vastly diminishes a song's overall value. I wondered aloud just what he meant by "a thousand hugs from ten thousand lightning bugs." To me, that could mean one of three things: he's getting one hug apiece from one thousand individual lightning bugs out of a group of 10,000; he's getting a combination of any number of hugs adding up to one thousand from any number of lightning bugs, again out of a pool of 10,000 total bugs; or he's getting a thousand hugs apiece from 10,000 lightning bugs, resulting in a net total of ten million distinct insect hugs. I'm inclined to believe it's the second choice (which actually inherently allows for the first choice, making it the most versatile and efficient), because getting ten million hugs in the form of one thousand hugs being doled out one after another would just take too long, especially considering you couldn't fit all 10,000 bugs on your person at one time. At any rate people, please, PLEASE stop liking this song, the novelty of hearing about this guy's looney dreams has long since worn off.

And speaking of lyrics, I still don't know what Martin of Boys Like Girls says at the end of the second verse of "Love Drunk." As best I can tell, it sounds like "Oh girl, you make me such a larsh..." What the heck is a larsh, anyway? Sure, I could look up what the actual word is and find out for you, but for my part, I prefer speculation. Based on the context of the rest of the song, I'd have to extrapolate the meaning of the word "larsh" as one who is angry, disappointed, and confused, most likely because the girl he loves suddenly wants nothing to do with him and he can't figure out just exactly why, nor can he get her to even talk to him, despite his best and repeated efforts. I guess a "larsh" is a good term for a guy in the early stages of a broken heart, which is to say that his denial of that fact is exemplified by his rage at the situation, which really is only there to cover up the fact that he's hurt. I think, then, that this song is a great example of a male speaking from that point of view; boldly offering a big fat "eff you" to the girl in whom he invested so much time only to have her yank the rug right out from under his feet, because that's simply the best (or at least easiest) way to deal with it right after the fact. You can tell how much a guy really cared about a girl by how much he hates her after she breaks up with him, and I think this song expresses that perfectly.

In addition to being a great breakup song, "Love Drunk" was Boys Like Girls' opening number when I saw them play live at Northern Lights last night. My review of that show (which also featured Cobra Starship, Versa Emerge, A Rocket to the Moon, and The Maine) will be the first featured review on the blog Danny Latin and I have started, and will be posted next Thursday, so keep your eyes peeled. What's better than one genius level blog-weaver giving his take on pop culture? That's right, TWO brilliant minds combining their powers into one solidified effort to do a mighty service for all the media hungry folks in internet land. If you like movies, TV, music, sports, or any other facet of modern entertainment, or if you just can't get enough of either of our timely insights, then you'll probably want to check billyanddanny.blogspot.com daily, because starting Monday, November 23rd, that's how often new content will be published. You heard me kids, we will be posting new stuff every single buckin day, so for those of you dissatisfied with the wait time in between posts on this blog, your cries have been heard, and you shall want no more. And while you're at it, tell your friends too, you wouldn't want them to miss out on the experience.

Alright, that's all for now. I'll see all of you on Monday at billyanddanny.blogspot.com.

This Post Dedicated To Matt Swain

Well fine citizens of the Interwebs, here I am, returned to the world of bloggery after a brief hiatus. My impromptu sabbatical was brought about not only by how busy I've been over the last two months or so, but also by the way all my thoughts have been jumbled up inside my head like a big freakin ball of Christmas lights that I, despite my best efforts, cannot seem to untangle. Many times I've come across ideas, shining brightly like the aforementioned lights, but I can't pick them out of the mess of cords and wires in order to make anything worthwhile out of them, so tonight I'm gonna try something different than usual. Instead of trying to showcase the individual bulbs on the string, I'm just gonna start at the beginning, follow the cord until I untangle a knot, and work my way down the rest of it until I get to the end. Hopefully by the time I plug it in, it'll look a lot better than it did before, and I think if I squeeze that metaphor any more, I'll be venturing into Coms 550 territory, and we all know that's where metaphors go if they haven't accepted Jesus.

I just turned 23, celebrating my first birthday at home since I turned 17, and I've realized something about birthdays: they're kind of frivolous, at least by this age. Sure, when you're younger, everyone gets excited about you turning another year older, and you feel "bigger," and every birthday leads up to another important milestone in your life. 21, however, is the last true milestone, and most people would consider it the biggest, as you're legal to drink alcohol at that age. The irony, though, is that all the people excited about being able to legally drink have no doubt already been drunk countless times, and the people who haven't don't really care about drinking anyway. But now, there's nothing super special about birthdays, I'm just getting older and older, and the numbers are steadily increasing, like an odometer ticking away as the miles roll on. And speaking of odometers, do you stop and give your car a gift every time it reaches another thousand miles? I think the concept of birthday presents is a little misguided. Don't get me wrong, I love getting gifts on my birthday (or any other time of year, for that matter), but let's bear in mind people, they are just that: gifts. It annoys me any time I hear somebody say "you deserve it" in regards to a birthday present or party or any other such trapping that goes along with the celebration of the event. Why, exactly, do you deserve that present? Because you lived to see the passing of another year? You don't deserve any presents, you get them from people that love you for precisely that reason, they love you and they're happy to see that you've stuck around for as long as you have. I suppose I've answered my own question (which I never formally stated, but it was "why do people get presents on their birthdays?"), so I guess this blog is a success already.

As I was saying though, I turned 23, and there wasn't anything terribly exciting about it. It was similar last year when I reached the nebulous age of 22... it's enough to make me question why we even bother celebrating it anymore. On the other hand, the age of 23 has the distinct honor of being mentioned in no less than three punk songs that I can think of right off the top of my head:

Nobody likes you when you're 23 (Blink 182 - What's My Age Again?)
We're almost 23 and you're still mad at me (Yellowcard - Twenty Three)
17, 18, 19 routine and here at 23 it's the same old me (Relient K - Maintain Consciousness)

Maybe there's something to being 23 that's gained it so much infamy in the punk music scene (don't even start with all the associations implied in that Jim Carrey movie, that's nothing but a novel bit of bollocks; furthermore, don't dissect my definition of "punk," just roll with it)... or maybe it's just the fact that it's the only age relevant to the genre that rhymes with "me." I guess I'll just have to wait and see what the next year offers up.

I mentioned drinking earlier, and incidentally, I got to experience interaction with a real live drunk person for the first time just recently. I had always heard that drunk people are funny, and to be honest, it's true, they are, but I also noticed something striking the other day. Once this particular fellow had had enough to drink to render him inebriated, everyone was constantly laughing at everything he did or said. While he is naturally a funny guy, I noted that his words and actions weren't really all that much funnier than normal. Everyone was treating him as though he had reached some transcendent state of humorous enlightenment, but it was pretty standard fare, so I didn't quite get what the big deal was. Like I said, the stuff he was doing was funny anyway, and would have gotten laughs if he had done it sober... and he would have done most of those same things sober, which is why the flag went up in my head. He was just being himself (albeit a slightly drunker version), only the laughs were heartier and more plentiful than usual. And then it hit me. The reason it was so funny wasn't because he was being funny, it was because his state of mind was altered by the alcohol, causing him to, in everyone else's view, do things that were funnier than usual. Apparently if you're not entirely in control of what you're doing, everything you do is that much more hilarious (whether you'd be doing it normally or not), and at that point, it stopped seeming funny and started seeming patronizing. Something to think about, folks: what are you laughing at, the person, or how the person is affected by a controlled substance?

To be honest, I really don't understand drinking as an activity. For one thing, it tastes disgusting, and for another thing, it inhibits your cognitive and physical processes. I suppose the latter would generally considered a benefit by the majority of Americans in my age group, but I don't need to get drunk to have a good time; I'm off-the-wall enough as it is, so why should I pump a bunch of potentially harmful chemicals into my body? On Saturday night, Chris and I went to a Halloween party the other night at a frat house on RPI's campus. I had a general inclination as to what it would be like (nothing to really do but drink, and I don't drink), but I figured, what the heck, I'd never experienced one before, so it might at least be interesting to see what goes on at one of those things. Plus, it was Halloween, and our plans for trick-or-treating had been dashed by the rain, so I wanted more people to see my costume and to see some other costumes as well, and a party seemed just as good a place as any for that. Well, I did see some costumes, including a sweet Rorschach costume, but otherwise it was a total waste of time (I doubt anyone even recognized who I was dressed as). It was dark and sweltering, with wall-to-wall bodies cramming the whole building, and music so loud I could barely hear myself think over the thumping bass beat. And, as I had predicted, the primary attraction was the alcohol, so basically my only option was to hang back around the wall and watch a bunch of sweaty drunk college students grind each other while other sweaty drunk college students pushed and shoved their way through the crowd. That got old real fast, and Chris and I left as soon as we had put in a requisite amount of time hanging around with a couple of his friends. The conclusion I drew from this experience was that secular campuses must be pretty boring, since it seems like the only thing there is to do is drink. Sure, there's not a whole lot to "do" at Liberty, but when everyone's just getting trashed, that's not "doing" anything either. It's not a social activity, because you're not interacting with people, you're interacting with intoxicated, alternate reality versions of those people, and there's a good chance they won't remember what happened anyway. I don't know how that passes for a good time.

Switching gears, earlier today I went to the mall by myself, and I was walking in the direction of Barnes & Noble. I was lost in thought, totally in the zone, when suddenly I heard "Young man, would you like to open an account?" I stopped, momentarily bewildered, and looked at the source of this intrusion to my thought processes. It was a middle aged lady standing outside a jewelry store with a clipboard. I didn't know what kind of account she was pestering me about, and I didn't care, so I just said "No thanks, I'm good," and kept right on walking. The occurrence was odd enough, since I wasn't even looking in her direction and she had called out to me for seemingly no reason other than that I was alone (and presumably vulnerable), but I shook it off and reached my destination without further incident. On my way back from Barnes & Noble, after looking at some sweet Green Lantern books (Rebirth and Sinestro Corps War, for anyone who's interested), I walked down the other side of the mall, and again I was completely zoned when, from out of nowhere, I'm blasted with "How are you doing?" Again, it's a chick out in front of a jewelry store, but this time it's a different jewelry store, and the girl is younger and actually fairly attractive. I was still annoyed at the interruption, but in the vein of politeness I said "Good, how are you?" to which she replied "Good, thanks," but by that time I was already several steps away, having escaped the pitch for the account she wanted me to open or whatever other kind of nonsense in which she was trying to get me to partake. Same as last time, I was walking at a steady pace, not looking at this girl in the slightest and certainly not making eye contact, yet she picked me off anyway. I wonder what it is about a twenty-something male alone in the mall that makes him a prime target for harassment of this kind outside a jewelry store; do I really fit their target demographic? If so, I can't imagine why.

If you've kept with me this long and you're wondering why this post was dedicated to Matt Swain, it's because he's been a faithful follower of my blog since its inception (as far as I can tell) and he recently admonished me to keep them coming. Not wanting to fail my public (especially my former prayer leader), I decided to sit down and plunk one out, regardless of how disjointed it may have been, and this post is the fruit of my labor. I'm glad I did, because I feel like I've worked out a few of my mental kinks, and from now on I'm gonna try to write these at more regular intervals. Matt, I hope you (and any other readers) found this enjoyable; it's no substitute for a small yellow placard, but this is the best offering of Joy I can give you right now. Hopefully it's adequate.

Out Of The Trap And After The Carrot

Well kids, we all know that nothing ever turns out the way we plan it; prime examples include Nick Donato's broken arm, my own higher education career, and who could forget the escape to the islands in Dawn of the Dead? You could cull countless examples from movies, literature, television shows, and certainly your own personal experiences, but dwelling on them would be needless. We've already been over the ramifications of the Cosmic Mouse Trap; the question, then, is: what do you do once you've gotten yourself out of the trap? The answer lies in following what I like to call the Cosmic Carrot.

What is the Cosmic Carrot, you ask? Well, in a word, happiness. You see, after a lot of thinking and one epiphanous shower (the greatest revelations are always given through interaction with water somehow) I realized something about happiness. Happiness is not, as people commonly think, a state of being, but rather a goal to be achieved, with one minor caveat: it is largely unachievable. Thus, happiness is like the carrot laid out before us, enticing us to trot along the path of life like a horse in hopes of one day devouring that carrot. It's not about reaching the carrot; realistically, that's everyone's objective, and that's as it should be. But the main purpose of the carrot itself is not to be eaten. It exists simply to motivate us to keep going.

So why is happiness a virtually unattainable goal? In order to answer that question, we have to look at what happiness is and where it comes from. Bear in mind, I'm not saying that you can never be happy. People are often happy at any given point in time, just as people are often warm at any given point in time. The problem is that happiness, like warmness, fluctuates with the temperature of the times. I'm willing to bet that most people never experience a longstanding sense of happiness, for one simple reason. Happiness is achieved through obtaining what you want, whether that comes from circumstances, people, objects, accomplishments, etc. I'm sure you're familiar with the phrase "the grass is always greener on the other side." If you don't have it, you want it, simply because you don't have it. My boy Teddy Geiger once said "you always want what you can't have," which is an apt way of putting it. I'd actually take that one step further, and say you only want what you can't have (which, in fact, is why I think the most sought-after girls seem to be single more often than not, but that's a whole separate issue). To extrapolate, not only do you want it if you don't have it, but you don't want it if you do have it. Want, by definition, is a state of pursuit, so once you've acquired whatever it is you're trying to obtain, how can you "want" it any longer? It's already yours. Thus, you can never be in possession of what it is you want, and if whatever you want is always out of reach, happiness really is never completely achievable.

Now that we've established that happiness is essentially an illusory bribe designed to propel us forward, what's to stop us from being completely miserable all the time? Well, the answer here is actually based on the premise of wanting. The way I see it, to want is a good thing, as long as the possibility of getting what you want is plausible. But like I said, once you get it, it's no longer an issue of "wanting" but an issue of "having." And soon, once you have that thing, it either passes away or you no longer want it, leaving you to move on to something else... and that's precisely the answer to the question posed at the beginning of the paragraph. It's not having the things you want, or even necessarily getting them that makes you happy. What makes you happy is knowing that you will or might have them in the future. Happiness is all about having something to look forward to, something that you can look to and say "things aren't great right now, but whenever this happens/I get that thing, things will be better." It's about having something to hope for, whether that hope is unfounded or not (which is why I've come to believe that false hope is better than none at all). Just like the horse and his carrot, it's about what's in front of you, not what you've currently got. If you get the carrot, you don't need to chase it anymore, so you stop moving. If there is no carrot, what's the motivation for moving at all?

As an application to my own personal experience, I always looked forward to going back to school at the end of summer, and I realized a while back that I would no longer be able to look forward to that anymore, which was quite a downer, I must admit. I figured I would take solace in the fact that I'd probably have a lot more free time in the near future, not realizing that I was doing exactly what I'm describing in this paragraph. And then, the other day it hit me. For the last week or two, since I finished working on those dance DVDs that had been occupying a lot of my time, I hadn't been doing much of anything. I would get up, eat, watch TV, sit on my bed and beebop around the internet, watch a movie, etc. But to be honest, I wasn't really having all that great of a time, which didn't make much sense to me, because I had the opportunity that I've always wanted... lots of free time and no real responsibility. I felt stuck, and I lacked the motivation to really do anything about it. I was a horse with no carrot. Then, the other day, whilst participating in an activity I would normally hate, I found myself feeling more alive than I have in a while. I was helping my dad move boxes from our shed to our driveway for a garage sale we're having this weekend, and though it wasn't much fun, I thought about how I wanted to be finished so I could go play the computer game I've been absorbed in for the past few days. And then it struck me like a 2x4 to the forehead. I wasn't exactly happy while I was working, but I had something to look forward to at the end of the work, which is what made it bearable. That's how you keep yourself from being miserable, even in the face of adverse circumstances... by having a light at the end of the tunnel, or a carrot that you can chase after.

The bigger epiphany hit me, like I said, while I was in the shower the other day. For a while now, I've been wondering what to do with my life. Up till now, school is the only thing I've ever known, and I wasn't ready to get a job, exactly. I was too hung up on getting a job that would make me "happy," doing something that I would enjoy, finding my purpose in life, that kind of thing. My parents have, for quite some time, wanted me to take a job that I don't think I would enjoy very much, and I've been fighting it every step of the way, not wanting to consign my life to going to work every day at a job that I can't stand. But in the shower, I finally put everything that I've discussed already in this blog together for myself, and realized that, for lack of any better idea, I should just take that job. If I sit around waiting forever, I'll just be in the same place I am right now: nowhere, with nothing to look forward to. But if I take that job, even if it doesn't ever really amount to anything, and even if I hate it (in fact, especially if I hate it), I will, at the very least, be able to look forward to being done for the day. Sure, things aren't turning out how I'd really like them to, but that small consolation is all I really need to maintain day-to-day happiness. Suffice it to say I find it very clever that the founding fathers included the "pursuit of happiness" as an inalienable right. You can't guarantee that everyone has what they want, but you can guarantee them something to want in the first place.

The bottom line is it's really all about is playing with the hand you're dealt, as they say. If you find yourself in the Cosmic Mouse Trap, take it from me: stop dwelling on how the trap has stunted your progress, take a good hard look at your surroundings, and start looking for the carrot again, in whatever form it may come, even if it's pointing you in a different direction than you originally intended to go. Just catching sight of the Cosmic Carrot may be enough to get you out of the trap.

Bonus Features On A Blog? Innovative!

Every time I log into the Blogger dashboard, it tells me how many posts I have, but it also includes unpublished drafts in that number, so I know that I don't actually have that many posts available for viewing on my blog. Today, I decided to check and see how many unpublished drafts I actually have, and upon inspection, I concluded that the total is four. I was about to delete these drafts so the post count upon login would no longer be lying to me, but I started going through them to see what I had written. I then realized that it would be a terrible shame to throw away all that work just because each draft belonged to an overarching idea or theme that I ultimately decided against using for whatever reason, and thus, today's blog idea was born. The following is a collection of the material that I opted not to use, the "deleted scenes," if you will, and frankly, I don't even remember what I was talking about when I initially wrote most of it, so if it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, that's why. This isn't going to be a terribly well thought-out blog, just a collection of some of the unwritten things that I was thinking during the Spring 2009 semester at Liberty. For my small contingency of readers, hopefully you'll enjoy it.

The first entry in my deleted scenes blog came from a draft entitled "If You Give A Grad Student A Cookie..." that I had written on April 21, 2009:

They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day,

Profound. I can't imagine why I didn't follow this up with anything else at all. I believe I was about to go on a rant about how I hate hearing that breakfast "jump-starts your metabolism," because that phrase is so dang hackneyed, but I guess I didn't have the heart. Also, I believe this was written the day after one of my graduate work-induced meltdowns, during which the cookies I had procured from the Clubhouse on the previous night basically preserved my sanity, so I think that's the connection to the cookie mentioned in the title. This nice girl who worked at the grill had given the cookies to me... I wish I could remember her name... oh well. I'm sure she's doing just fine for herself these days.

The next entry comes from a draft titled "Reflections on an Easter Weekend." If you take note, this phrase is properly capitalized in accordance with the rules for such things, so this must have been written before I adopted the practice of disregarding English rules and capitalizing every word of my titles no matter what. I don't know when I started doing that, but it must have been before April 13, 2009:

You may have noticed that every Wednesday for the last three weeks, I've posted a new blog. Well, this week I'll probably be too busy on Wednesday night to get around to that (ah grad school, how I love thee), so I figured I'd put this up tonight to tide my regular readers over for the week. I don't have anything very insightful or even of real significance to say; if you haven't noticed, usually my inspiration comes from frustrating interactions with females, and most of the girls I hang out with on a regular basis have been out of town for Easter, so I haven't really seen them since Thursday. At any rate, even though I don't have any kind of grandiose overarching point, I do have an urge to just sit and throw down some of the stuff that's been swimming around in my head the past few days.

Let's start with the Easter holiday that has erroneously been dubbed "Easter Break" at Liberty University. First of all, it's not a "break." It's a day off. One freaking day off. We get Monday off (and, for the record, this was a tradition enacted in 2007; prior to that year we Liberty students got no days off for Easter), and people commonly wonder why we get the Monday after Easter off as opposed to Good Friday. The answer is simple: having Monday off, everyone who went home for Easter can stay through the entirety of Easter Sunday and then leave on Monday. This brings me to my second point, which is actually a question: why would you want to leave Liberty at Easter time? I understand that Easter is an important holiday for Christians and that people like to spend it with their families (I too enjoy Easter with my family, when I'm already home), but in all honesty, Easter weekend is traditionally one of the best weekends of the year at Liberty. It makes absolutely no sense to me to spend money to go home so you can miss out on the experience. Maybe the experience isn't the same for everyone, maybe it's just my particular group of friends and the way we celebrate that makes it so awesome. I don't know, I suppose this particular dead horse has already received a sound beating, so I will go no further, I guess I just feel sorry for everyone who misses out on the Easter festivities held by those of us carrying on the 22-3 Legacy.

Speaking of Easter festivities, this year was no exception to the general rule of awesomeness. For starters, Ryan came up from Florida, and I haven't seen Ryan since early December, so it's been over four months. Andrew Clark has been back from Ohio for the last two weeks, so he was here to join in the fun. Danny Latin, Aaron Crawford, and I are all still students at Liberty, so the only people missing from the Golden Age of 22-3 were Jamie and Sean, both of whom are fully entrenched in the working world now.

As you can see, even then I acknowledged the tribulations of dealing with women as the lifeblood of my blogging career, and I recall being very annoyed that they all bailed on us for Easter, but I think just the sheer enormity of the task of describing what happened that weekend deterred me from finishing; either that or something Ian and Milton were doing in the room distracted me and I never got back to it.

The next excerpt truly is a bit off the cutting room floor, as it's part of an early version of the post I ended up writing about the differences between the worldviews of the Watchmen characters Rorschach and The Comedian. While I ultimately took a different approach to the post as a whole than the one I had chosen upon starting it, this small bit, written on March 29, 09, is still applicable:

On the ride back from lunch today, after considering the number of cars the average American family has (which, in my estimation, is roughly one per person and, in my mind, is also absolutely ridiculous), I noted an exchange from Watchmen, wherein Nite Owl wonders aloud what happened to the American Dream, and The Comedian responds, in the face of a chaotic New York cityscape, "It came true. You're looking at it." Following this seemingly random (but actually calculated) excerpt, one of the females in the car asked who spoke that particular line, and after I told her, the other female (who had seen the movie) said "Ooh, he was AWFUL! I didn't like him!" I briefly described The Comedian's worldview, and after hearing my description, the first girl said "That's a sad way to look at life. It sounds a lot like the way Bill looks at it."

My original introduction for this post felt clunky and much too direct for my liking, which is why I decided to postpone the idea until I had something better to go on, and I'm glad I did.

Speaking of directness though, I must have been following the same line of thinking that I espoused in this draft, the last of the deleted scenes:

A brief note on subtlety: if you want to get a message across, don't use it. I've found that people often don't want to think too much (which, I believe, is why some people don't like masterpieces like Watchmen or the Matrix Trilogy). As a result, they may hear exactly what it is you're saying, but won't understand precisely what you mean. I'm a big fan of ambiguity and double entendres used in such a manner that your words may mean more than just what they say. Unfortunately, sometimes the only way to make people understand what you're getting at is to bash them over the skull with it.

Interestingly, that short paragraph serves as a surprisingly appropriate appetizer for the main course du jour. Since I just stated that subtlety is generally lost on the masses, I'm gonna throw this out there for everyone to read, plain and simple: what I initially meant in that first paragraph was that sometimes I make statements, comments, remarks, references, etc., and the real meaning goes unnoticed by most people. Then I realized that I've got a perfect case of dual meaning going on here,

And I guess I just stopped mid-thought right there, but the draft continues for one more line after that, probably because I wanted to throw down a thought that I didn't want to forget (I do this often while I'm composing blogs):

Speaking of oblivious people, I've got another subject to address:

My guess is that I was gonna go off on the general lack of perception that girls seem to show, although that generality was more than likely inspired by a singular source. Unfortunately, I no longer remember the specifics, nor do I remember exactly why I titled it "Hey Kid, You'll Never Live This Down." What I do know is that the title is taken from a line in the Fall Out Boy song "A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More Touch Me." I think the significance of the title was meant to be discovered upon examination of the song; I do know the line that follows that particular one had special significance, and that the reason I chose this line for the title was multifaceted, a common habit of mine. But like I said, I can't remember exactly what I meant when I wrote it. I think I mentioned dual meanings at the end of the second paragraph for that precise reason. Apparently, I also wrote this draft on March 29, although it was probably some time after midnight the night before I wrote the other draft.

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, my unpublished material from Spring 09, foisted upon the world of the internet for all to see and probably for two or three to read. But that's okay, at the very least a few people will (hopefully) get something out of this, and my dashboard will henceforth reflect an accurate post count.

This Is What Dreams Are Made Of

Okay, so last night I had one of the weirdest dreams I've had in a while. Of course, weird dreams are commonplace, and the events in the dreams were plenty bizarre, but one of the strangest things about it was that it was one of the most linear dreams I've had in recent memory. Thus, tonight, instead of my usual blogging fare, I'm going to transcribe the events of this dream for you, and hopefully you'll find it at least marginally entertaining.

At the start of the dream, I was on my way to Williamsport, PA for the Little League World Series with my brothers Chris and Ned and the rest of the Colonie Little League crew. We stopped about halfway through our journey and got out of our cars and ventured off into the woods to stretch our legs a bit. I was wandering around, and I got separated from everyone else and ultimately lost in the woods. When I finally met up with some other people (they were nameless and faceless and didn't play much of a part in the rest of the dream), they told me that while I had been lost, the world had been taken over by an evil European noble of sorts, and that he was building concentration camps all over the country in which to torture and kill people. I looked around and saw that a large fence had been erected around the forest in which I had found myself, and knew that I was trapped.

Some time passed (I don't know how much, but it seemed to be several days, at least), and after a while a new group of people that had been rounded up by the evil noble's forces were dumped off in my little area of the camp. These people were a group of five Asian midgets, all of whom were female, except for one male who looked just like the puppet version of Kim Jong-il from Team America: World Police. At first they tore wildly around the camp, acting much like ill-behaved five year olds on sugar highs (or Gremlins) and basically getting on everyone's nerves, so I took it upon myself to get them to calm down. This was no small feat, but eventually, over the course of a week or so, I got them to calm down and I became friends with the little Asians.

Another member in the camp who I found to be a surprisingly nice person was the Grinch. Not the cartoon Grinch, but Jim Carrey's Grinch. Unfortunately, though we got along very well, one day his number was up, and he was taken off by the guards to be tortured and executed. At that point, I knew we had to try to escape. I didn't just want to wait around until it was my time to be killed. It was then that Miley Cyrus and I realized that a contraption that the guards had been using as a snow plow was actually an old medieval style catapult. The two of us found a portion of the fence that was covered in plastic wrap at the bottom and tore a small hole in it. The hole was maybe five inches in diameter, but we both somehow managed to squeeze through it anyway, and when we got through the bottom of the fence, we each got on one side of the plow/catapult and began to push it along the ground, scraping the bottom of the fence along its length in such a manner that it caused the fence to become uprooted. We were somehow doing this very stealthily, and destroying large portions of the fence without the guards noticing.

We worked our way, slowly, toward the bad guy's headquarters, and once we got to the very edge of the wall there, we stopped. We saw Revolutionary War-era British soldiers, and knew that these were the bad guy's personal guards, and we didn't want to alert their attention, so we just kind of snuck around a little bit, finding out as much as we could about the place. We noted that the bad guy had a female sidekick, and I can only describe her as looking like the picture on the "Blood Cultist" Magic card (which you can see here). The two of them were designing a new type of torturous execution device. It was a giant wooden chair, the kind with vertical slats on the back, that was wide enough to seat three people, except it was made out of metal and had a long handle protruding from the back. It worked like this: three people would be tied up and seated on the chair, while the chair was pushed ever so slowly toward a giant fire, until all the people on the chair were eventually in the fire burning to death. This contraption was called the "Butter Burner." I heard them discussing plans to put us in it, so we hastily left that place.

Before we left the complex, however, I managed to find a book that had background information on the five Asian midgets that had been placed in our sector of the camp. As it turned out, they were all criminals of some sort. One of the females was a cannibal, and the male was a pedophile, but those are the only two I remember. At any rate, I figured their criminal history could be useful in staging an uprising at the camp, so I was delighted to find this information out. Once we got back to our area of the camp, I was surprised to find the Grinch waiting for us. He was in rough shape, and his entire body had been shaven, so instead of his signature pyramidal hairdo, all he had was a fuzzy green buzz cut. He also had stitches on his face. I asked him what had happened, how he had survived, and he told me that they beat him up, sewed a pineapple to his face, and then left him for dead. He pretended to die, and then once the guards left, he ripped the pineapple off his face and made his way back to the camp proper. I told him of our plans to basically riot and escape, and he said that since they thought he was dead, he could use the element of surprise to help us out.

At that point, I went over to Miley and told her it was time to really start destroying the place. We grabbed the plow/catapult, and started crashing around with it, tearing down as much of the fences as we could and not worrying about whether or not we were making too much noise. I had hoped that we would be able to get to the main complex and destroy it before we were caught, but the guards captured us just outside of it and took us into the inner chamber. The bad guy then made some kind of speech about how it was our turn to die, and they began preparing to strap us into the Butter Burner. I was terrified. Then, from behind a pillar, the Grinch suddenly sprang out, grabbed the bad guy by the head, and bashed his skull repeatedly against the pillar until he was dead. The guards were startled, and ran toward the Grinch without thinking about us. I immediately jumped up, grabbed the Blood Cultist Lady's head, and bashed it violently against another pillar until she was dead as well. Meanwhile, the Grinch and Miley Cyrus were disposing of the guards in the same fashion. Soon, we were all killing the guards and everyone in the place was making a break for it, and then I woke up.

So that's it. If anyone out there can interpret dreams, I'd be interested to hear theories, because that was just too bizarre. I hope you enjoyed this little slice of my subconscious.

A Great Defeat And A Small Triumph

Let's start today's blog off with a brief history lesson.

In the summer of 2007, the Colonie Little League 10 year old All-Stars took the postseason by storm. They went undefeated through District 13, then through Section 2, and finally, they won the New York State Championship without suffering a single loss. The following year, 2008, the same group of kids now comprised the 11 year old All-Stars. There was some speculation as to whether or not they would be able to recapture the state championship; after all, winning back-to-back state championships is a feat that doesn't happen often, and usually, winning a championship in the first place involves some degree of luck. But, when all was said and done, the 2008 11 year olds did exactly what they did the year before: they went undefeated through the state tournament to take the championship for the second consecutive year. As it turned out, they were just that good. The 2009 season was rife with anticipation for what was to come during the All-Star season, because, as you may know, the 12 year old year of Little League is when it really counts and you can finally advance past the state tournament, into the regionals, and ultimately to the World Series. Having won the state championship for two years running with a record of 21-0, it was basically expected that this team, which had twice proven itself to be the best New York State had to offer, would once again capture the state title and go on to the regionals in Bristol, CT. There, they would play teams representing the other states in the Mid-Atlantic region, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., for a chance to compete in the World Series in Williamsport, PA. No team in recent history had a better chance of making it to Williamsport than the 2009 12 year old All-Stars, and after the roster was posted in June, things were shaping up very nicely.

July 6th, 2009, The Crack Heard Round The World: Nick Donato, the 12 year olds' most dominant pitcher, hitter, and all-around star player, was pitching in the City-County semi-final for Vellano Brothers, the Colonie Little League regular season champions. On his third pitch, there was an audible cracking noise, and he fell to the ground. After the wild rumors were done circulating, I heard what happened straight from the source. A spiral fracture, which had started roughly a year before and had gone unnoticed for that duration, had finally opened up, and split his humerus clean in two. He would be unable to play ball for three months, and the All-Star season started in just one week. Basically, at that point, everyone's dreams of going to the World Series were crushed. Sure, a team that good doesn't achieve what they had on the merits of one player alone, and they hadn't; they truly were a great team. But when you take the best player right off the top, you're crippled. They did dominate the district tournament, and went undefeated all the way to the sectional championship, but they lost that game, the first loss they had ever incurred, and their amazing journey was finally over.

I can say with confidence that with Nick on the team, they would not have lost that sectional championship. The team that ended up winning the state, South Shore Little League from Staten Island, would have given them a run for their money, and it would have been a very tough game, but they would not have been an insurmountable challenge. And had they won the state, there is no doubt in my mind that they'd be playing in Williamsport now, because I watched the regional tournament, and the teams that South Shore played there were nothing really special; our 12s would have beaten them with relative ease. All of that, however, was wiped away with one broken arm, the greatest tragedy I've witnessed in my 18 year involvement with Colonie Little League.

Where am I going with all this, you ask? To Williamsport, naturally, which is where I spent this past weekend with this very group of kids (and the rest of the 12 year olds who played for Colonie this year). Going to the Little League World Series was an amazing experience, but at the same time, a bittersweet one. For a time, while watching the South Shore team that represented not only New York but the Mid-Atlantic region, I couldn't shake the feeling that that should be our team down there on the field. Those should be our families cheering for them. Those should be our kids signing autographs for other star struck Little Leaguers and being treated like Major League Baseball players. Angelo Navetta shouldn't have been the most sought-out autograph from the New York team, it should have been Nick Donato. And when Chris pointed out how cool it would be to see Nick as a World Series celebrity, I couldn't stop thinking about that either. I was watching the star players from the World Series teams, and how they acted when they were approached by other kids for autographs. They were quiet, aloof, unenthusiastic, almost like they were sick of signing autographs, like they had already gotten used to the fame and adoration they were receiving. In a word, they came off as arrogant. Now, Nick Donato is a character, that's for sure, but he's the same character everywhere he goes. It's kind of hard to describe, and you really have to know him, but he would have been a ton of fun to be around at the World Series if he had been on one of the teams playing in it. On the field, he's all business, but off the field, he's a total goof, and he would have made the most of that whole scene without being arrogant, because that is one thing he is not and has never been. I think, if for no other reason than the way he carries himself, he deserved that kind of status more than any of these other kids.

On the other hand, while it was a crushing blow to watch players from another team get to do what our team should have been doing, I did take some consolation in the fact that if they were playing, I wouldn't get to experience the World Series with them. And yes, they were a great team, but they're also a really great group of kids too. Part of what made the World Series experience so amazing was getting to spend that whole weekend with these kids. For the most part, they weren't even fazed by the fact that there was another team playing in their place; it seemed like it bothered me more than it bothered them, and I respect them for being able to take it all in stride. Although, as an aside, I was remarking to Chris that every time one of them saw a member of the South Shore team, they should have said "Nick broke his arm. You're welcome."

Another really cool aspect of the weekend was the exhibition game at Original Field, the Birthplace of Little League. If you know me, or if you've been paying attention to anything you've been reading for the last few paragraphs, then you know how much I love Little League Baseball, so to get to go see the very field on which it was first played, and see some of the guys who played on the very first World Series championship team, was just incredible. All the 12 year olds on the trip (24, to be exact, which included kids who weren't on the 12 year old All-Stars) played a 3 inning exhibition game on the field, and during this game, I got to announce for half an inning. I was the first full-time Voice of Colonie Little League, from 2003-2004, so to be able to announce at Original Field was a tremendous honor (Chris, as the current Voice of Colonie Little League, announced the other two and a half innings while I ran around taking pictures and video).

Another thing that amazed me was the sleeper hit activity of the weekend: Mao. In case you're unfamiliar, Mao is a card game (named after the Chinese dictator) in which the rules are not told, only enforced through penalties doled out by the Mao Master, so you have to figure them out as you play, basically by trial and error. It's unbelievably frustrating when you first start playing, but once you figure out the game, it's a great deal of fun. After we were done playing poker for M&Ms, I suggested on a whim that we play Mao, figuring that these antsy 12 year old kids amped up on a sugar high wouldn't have the attention span to sit through one game before they got sick of it and left for something less ambiguous and more frantic. I was surprised when they not only sat through the first game, but kept insisting on playing until they learned all the rules. And THEN, they kept wanting to play it at virtually every free moment back at the campground for the rest of the trip. They demonstrated a shocking degree of patience and self-control, which is odd, considering the fact that most college age individuals I've played with don't conduct themselves the way these kids did. In fact, the only time I ever played Mao with people my age in the capital region, most of them quit angrily after Chris figured out what was going on and they didn't. So I have to give props to the Colonie 12s for their keen observations, (mostly) cool heads, and the overall astute manner in which they played.

On a more personal level, I think this past weekend was just what I needed; circumstances haven't come to pass the way I would have liked in recent history, and I figured a few days away from home would take my mind off things. They did, and then some. The first day, when all we did was arrive at the campground, go swimming, eat dinner and then hang out a little before bed, I spent most of the night trying to convince myself that I was having a good time. Granted, I was having a good time, especially during those two crazy games of Pooltimate Frisbee, but I was preoccupied with trying to shake the feeling that I should be in Lynchburg. On day two, that all changed. I didn't need to shake it anymore, because I became completely absorbed in the World Series. As I said before, I love baseball, and Little League is my favorite form of baseball, so having the opportunity to watch the 16 best Little League teams in the world play against each other was a great treat. I could have done it for hours on end, and in fact, I did. When one game ended, another began, and for two days, we went back and forth between Volunteer Stadium and Lamade Stadium watching the teams face off against each other, and it never got old. The night games in particular were filled with an incredible energy, electrifying the atmosphere. My favorite spot from which to watch the games was basically anywhere behind the outfield fence at Lamade, the main field. Whenever a player hit a home run, there was a mad rush to get the ball, as those World Series balls become prized souvenirs for anyone fortunate enough to get their hands on one (alas, I didn't). I did, however, have a brief stint on ESPN during a commercial break, along with my cohorts (including Chris and Nick) as the crane camera took a shot of us behind the right field fence at Lamade during the Georgia/New York game on Saturday afternoon. We spent basically all of Friday and Saturday at the Little League Complex, and after our time was done, I didn't want to leave. I was enjoying the experience so much that I would have stayed out the week to watch the rest of the series if I could have.

So to recap: the trip spanned four days, Thursday-Sunday, with the meat of the adventures occurring at the Little League Complex on Friday and Saturday. We had two awesome, non-stop days filled with nothing but baseball, and I haven't had such a great time all summer. Now obviously, the primary reason for the immense amount of enjoyment I got out of this trip was that it was structured around one of my favorite pastimes, but there was another reason for its greatness that I didn't realize until the second day we were there: there were no women on the trip whatsoever. None. There were 30 some odd kids, probably a little more than half that many adults, and not a one of them was female. This hit me like a glorious epiphany from the heavens as I was coming out of the shower at the start of day 2. A self-sufficient group of men planned a four day trip, made the journey, supplied themselves with food (this includes cooking, for the record), cleaned up after themselves, made sure they were at the right places at the right times, and had an awesome time doing it. There was no complaining, no nagging, no excess worrying, no lapses in rationality, no impractical uses of time, no whining, and, most importantly (and this also sums up everything I've just listed), no distractions from our purpose for being there. The trip had a few extremely minor hitches - some kids failed to check in with their chaperones at times, and one kid got briefly sick - but other than that, it was a wild success. It was, as we realized, the ultimate Manventure; in fact, it was a Manventure of such epic proportions that it was dubbed a Pilgrimange. I've long said that women are the cause of all the world's problems, and this trip, which had no noteworthy problems, is just more evidence to further that theory.

And look, it even restored my convictions and got me railing against women again. If that's not a great trip, I don't know what is.

The Flood Behind Me

I'm not feeling particularly inspired tonight, but for lack of anything else that really interests me at the moment, I turn my fingers once more to the Keys of Truth (as they've just now been designated) to pound out what is sure to be another enlightening glimpse into the world of my wacky noodle. I've found that, if nothing else, this blog serves as a way for me to vent a little every so often, and I've also been told that it's a somewhat regular dose of the Billcast, which makes me feel like it's that much more worthwhile. For the unfortunate souls who never got to experience the Golden Age of 22-3, the Billcast, as it was dubbed by Andrew Clark, the One True Prayer Leader and fellow blogging aficionado (click this blue text here to read his blog), was what occurred whenever I would burst into 305 ranting emphatically about whatever happened to be on my mind at the time. I guess I did it so often that it warranted its own title.

I don't know if anyone else out there noticed this, but it occurred to me that the entity which antagonizes me the most and incites me to the point of fervent bloggery, my bread and butter, if you will, has gone completely unaddressed in the last two posts, and that entity is the people group known, as I tastefully decline to use a more offensive term, as "females." That's right folks, I haven't complained a lick about anything girls have done to bother me in over a month, which, if you know me, is quite the feat. I'm sure this is mostly due to the fact that my interactions with members of the opposite sex have been, for the last three months and counting, limited those that I have with members of my immediate family and those I have by means of interstate instant message conversations. This, of course, puts a cap on the number of things women can do to really irk me, and it's begun to show, but that leads to a more interesting conclusion that I've drawn about myself.

If I've not made it clear already, a large portion of my inspiration, at least for this blog, has come from witnessing females take courses of action that challenge my notions of what rational thought really is, or in laymen's terms, from watching them do things that bug the crap out of me. But that got me thinking, especially last night, when I went to write a new blog and initially had nothing to say, about what it is that gets me going on a more basic level. When I sat down to start writing, I was in a rather indifferent mood; not a pleasant one, necessarily, but I wasn't particularly upset about anything. As I geared myself up to write the blog, I realized that the method by which I was preparing myself mentally was to try and irritate myself to the point of having something to say... basically mental stimulation through situational frustration. It then occurred to me that if I wasn't really irritated about anything at the moment, it would be stupid of me to irritate myself and put myself in a bad mood just so I could write something down, so I decided to just watch a movie instead. But it dawned on me at that point: my inspiration comes mainly through irritation. If I'm not up in arms about something, I don't really have much to say. This, of course, is not always the case, but most of the time it's true.

And that brings me to the here and now. Again, tonight, I feel largely indifferent toward virtually everything; indeed, I feel almost consumed by apathy. Maybe it's just a temporary inclination brought about by a dull routine into which I've fallen over the past week or two, but maybe it's something more. When an exchange that I'm sure going in will get me fired up (or at least remotely concerned) just fizzles out and dies without leaving any real impression on me, it makes me pause to wonder: what's wrong with me? I'm not used to this, it's very strange, but I can't seem to shake it. Maybe it's a good thing that I'm not so concerned about certain things, but I basically feel that way about everything right now.

Yesterday Chris, the younger siblings, and I went to the Imagination Station, which is the coolest playground in all the land. It's tough to describe to somebody who's never been there, but it's got these big wooden structures that are connected via bouncy bridges and monkey bars and winding, maze-like platforms. If I were a little kid, I would have a blast playing there, and it almost makes me wish I had gone to Shaker Elementary, just so I could have experienced recess at the Imagination Station. When we got out of the car, however, we saw that one of the big wooden structures near the entrance had been replaced with a shiny new piece of playground equipment, made of metal and plastic and boasting a rather tall twisty slide. On its own, this piece was impressive, of course, a marvel of modern playground engineering and demonstrative of the latest in playground safety measures (shredded pieces of tire provided a squishy cushion at the base of the structure, in stark contrast to the wood chips that litter the rest of the playground). But it's just not the same. While it may not have been as visually stunning, the old wooden piece that formerly resided there had a great deal of character, and I was sad to see it gone in favor of what I can only describe as "change" with a twinge of "hope." I was extremely disappointed when I saw that one of my favorite things, the little talky boxes connected by underground pipes at opposing ends of the playground, had been removed to make way for this monstrosity. I was even more dismayed when I went over to the swing set. The swing set I had discovered three years ago, my favorite swing set in the whole world, was gone, replaced by a new one of the same breed as the structure that took the place of our old wooden friend. All sentimentality aside, even in its practical application, this new swing set is inferior, as the supports are not as high as the old set's, and the swing's radius from the top of the support is decreased, allowing you to only dream wistfully of how high you had once been able to soar on those old swings. One thing that was left unchanged, however, was the Low Rider Swings way off in the distance, and thank goodness for that. At least there I could sit and ponder my existence without feeling like I was a visitor on some strange alien playground.

My point is this: the past is gone and the future is bleak, so you can't look to either for comfort. Maybe the notion that I'm just stuck exactly where I am is what's causing me to be so apathetic. I feel like deviation from what I'm already familiar with will bring nothing but trouble, but at the same time, I'm forced to stray from the beaten path that I love so much. I'm in a situation that I'm not exactly fond of, but at least it's safe, so I can't really complain either. Maybe a few days in Williamsport will put things in a better perspective, or at least distract me a little.

The Life Altering Decisions Of A Bug On The Side Of The Road

I enjoy walking; or, more specifically, I enjoy taking walks. Whenever I've got a lot on my mind or I'm not sure what to do with myself, or even just when I want to get out and move around a bit, taking a walk is one of my favorite choices. Something about being alone out in the open air and trekking forth without a necessarily clear-cut destination is relaxing, and it provides a level of privacy that I can almost never get in my own house. I'm able to mull things over, to consider my circumstances and how they could be impacted by decisions I've made or will make, and, on occasion, make some interesting observations. I can't say it clears my head, because usually it's just the opposite. My thoughts crash about just as furiously as they always do, but whenever I'm out wandering around, they do their crashing with less interference from external distractions, which sometimes leads me to draw some interesting conclusions based on how the different interpretations of what I've experienced intermingle.

Lately I've been trying to make some decisions, and I've been rather frustrated with my complete lack of progress, so I decided to go out and walk in a giant circle around my neighborhood. If nothing else, I figured I was at least getting some exercise. So I took off down the street at about 8:50 PM and figured my journey would take roughly an hour (it did). As I was walking, I saw a small green bug scurry across my path and into the grass by the side of the road just as a car came flying by. It occurred to me that this bug probably just crossed the road, and that may not really seem like anything special, but think about it: a bug crossed the road. Without getting hit by a car. Honestly, what are the odds? Think about how huge that road is in the bug's eyes, and consider the frequency at which cars travel down it (this is a pretty busy road, for the record, not some backwoods dirt path, just so you know). I can picture the bug sitting on the one side of the road, psyching himself out in preparation for the coming ordeal. There he is, knowing this is an all-or-nothing undertaking; his success at this endeavor makes or breaks his entire future. He pauses to contemplate for a moment: his very life is on the line if he decides to go ahead with this very dangerous maneuver. Is what's waiting for him on the other side worth risking everything to attain? Is he even capable of making it across at all? Finally, he comes to the conclusion that he must go, that reaching whatever is on the other side is worth the price of making the journey. He skitters out and for a little while, it's smooth sailing. Suddenly, a car comes barreling down the road at what seems like a million miles an hour, and he just narrowly avoids a sudden and untimely demise underneath its tires. More cars come and go just as rapidly, but he succeeds in avoiding death at their hands as well. Finally, after what feels like hours, the bug has the lush green scenery of the other side of the road in his sights; if only he can make it past that final white line, the line that denotes his success. If he can just keep going for a little while longer, he'll be home free. He hears one last car rumbling toward him from way off in the distance, and resolves to make one last push toward that line. With all his effort, he heaves his body out of the way of the car, and finds himself, at long last, within the safety of the grass, having made his way laboriously across the entirety of the road, triumphing against all odds and in the face of the most adverse circumstances he's ever known. He rejoices victoriously, and scampers off to claim his prize, proud of everything he has achieved.

And yet... it was still just a bug. Crossing the road. He got where he was going, but really, where was he going? No one cared when he started out, no one cared when he got there, and no one cares now. Who knows if he's even still alive? I happened to see him cross the road successfully, and after processing it, I thought, "Wow, that's pretty impressive." But in the grand scheme of things, his accomplishment in crossing the road was completely and utterly worthless and irrelevant.

Which begs the question ladies and gentlemen... what's the point? I could beat myself up overanalyzing the context of every decision I ever have to make, weighing the pros and cons and trying to figure out what the very best course of action to take is. That course of action could be a risky one, but it could very well pay off handsomely in the end if I succeed. Or I could take the safe route, one that may not be as rewarding in the end, but that guarantees a solid and stable environment for myself. Either way, that bug who wanted to cross the road may as well have been named Bill, and I think I can take a lesson from the exploits of Billy the Bug: whatever I do, it ain't gonna amount to a hill of beans in the end. The irony that any given circumstance can seem so gravely important and yet have virtually no real significance is something I can appreciate, which just makes me chuckle even more heartily at this masterfully crafted joke we live in. I can't wait for the real punchline.

This Post Brought To You By the Christian Love Of Liberty University's Administration

It is with a heavy heart that I begin this post... so brace yourselves kids, when I start a blog with a statement that serious, you know something's amiss. I still can't quite wrap my head around what I'm about to say, and although I've been dancing around the possibility all summer, hoping it would never actually come to this, the breaking point has finally been reached via, dare I say, a series of unfortunate events. And so, I must finally step up and take my place in the Real World alongside the greats who came before me, Jamie Newman, Sean Harrison, Andrew Clark, and Ryan Trammell. I will not be returning to Liberty University in the Fall.

For those of you who know me (which I'm pretty sure is everyone reading this), you are aware that this is the moment I've dreaded the most since I first started college in the Fall of 2004. And even though I was able to prolong my educational experience for an extra year beyond undergrad by enrolling in grad school at Liberty, I still feel like it's been cut short because I was planning on having one more year. Of course, after having completed my Master's Degree, I would certainly have been finished; I'm not one for the scholarly scene, and my solitary year of grad school was miserable enough on the academic front. But that loss of one year really throws everything off, you know? I suppose in a certain sense it's good that it's playing out this way, because I didn't spend the whole of my last year fretting about the fact that it was the last time I would be doing any given thing, and in that capacity I probably got more enjoyment out of all those things. But the realization that I will never again get to do any of those particular things (play intramural sports, go to Scaremare and Coffeehouse, even eat at the Rot) when I had been intent on having another whole year to do all of them comes as quite a shock, and I still don't think it's really hit me yet.

For all the fond memories of I have of 8th Grade, my four years of undergrad at Liberty University were without a doubt the best times of my life. I could go on forever with stories, amusing anecdotes, interesting factoids, and references to inside jokes that I've compiled since I arrived in Lynchburg on August 15th, 2004. I think part of what made it so great was how easy the program actually was; I pretty much breezed through my Communication Studies (with a concentration in Video Broadcasting) degree and had tons of spare time for socialization. And this past year was nothing to sneeze at either; the schoolwork was hell, but socially it was great, in spite of the fact that several of my closest friends had graduated and moved on. Liberty University truly is an amazing institution, primarily because of the awesome people who comprise the student body. Actually, replace the word "primarily" in that last sentence with "only," and we have an excellent transition to my next section.

If you're wondering about the title of this post, allow me to explain. The aforementioned series of unfortunate events all began back in late May, when I ran into an unsettling situation regarding my employment for next year. I hadn't wanted to say anything directly about it via this forum until I knew for sure what the resolution of the whole fiasco was, which is actually what kept me from blogging for so long back then, but since it's all over now I might as well spill. As most of you know, I was a GA with the Coms department teaching Coms 101 to freshmen this past year, and GAs are required to maintain a yearly GPA of at least 3.0 in order to keep their jobs (hilarious side note: the minimum GPA to be a GA is the same as the minimum GPA just to graduate; you would think the requirements for holding a special position would be higher, but that's just one example of Liberty's brilliantly thought-out graduate program). Well, I ran into a few problems, so I sought help from the higher-ups at Liberty, starting with the Coms department heads. Now, I don't want to mention anyone by name, so I'm going to give all the important characters fictional names. The first response I got came from the man we'll call Dr. Michael Richards, and it was nothing short of Christ-like; that is, if you're talking about the Fake Life Jesus who just said "You screwed up? That's really too bad. I can't die for you, and though I am condemning you to hell, I sincerely hope you manage to find your own way into heaven somehow." I believe he'll be teaching a graduate course in Baptist Phariseeism sometime this fall; for those of you with no compassion and a desire to do tons of work, I would highly recommend this class.

So, of course, I climbed the chain of command, bringing me to the Obelisk of Academia and its high priest, Dr. Prasiebandsinger Handjoint. Again, I got a similar roadblock, even after explaining my situation in even greater detail to him. Apparently the phrase "I can't afford to continue my education without this job" means nothing to people who already have their PhDs; either that or they were just calling my bluff. Well boys, if this were a poker game, I'd be raking the chips in right now, cuz that was no bluff. This response, of course, is right in line with the course of action we as GAs were instructed to take when approached in a similar manner by our own Coms 101 students, and it seems rooted in some kind of extreme dishonesty paranoia. We were always told that, if a student asked for an extension of a deadline, for instance, only give it to them if we were absolutely certain they were not lying, if they had a history of turning their work in on time and could somehow prove the truthfulness of whatever extenuating circumstances they claimed. They said that we couldn't afford to make exceptions to the policies with all the people out there willing to lie just to get a better grade. That philosophy always seemed backwards to me, and as such, I essentially disregarded it. I almost always gave extensions if they were requested, because the way I see it, if a kid is lying about his circumstances, then sure, he gets a break he doesn't really deserve. But on the other hand, if that kid isn't lying, he isn't needlessly screwed over just because he can't prove he isn't lying. Boy I could go on and on about the rather surprising attitudes held by many of the GAs who supported this philosophy and the things they said and did to adhere to it, but I digress.

After being rejected by Dr. Handjoint, who told me that he had been persuaded that the decision of the department heads must stand, I had no recourse but to go to the Big Man himself, who we will call Billy Kincaid (which, as a somewhat obscure Spawn reference, actually works on three levels... bonus points if you can figure out what they are. Hint: the primary one is symbolic of his most worthwhile contribution to the running of the university). Initially, I got a response from one of Billy's assistants, saying that Billy would be unable to intervene in this situation, as that decision is up to the heads of the department, and that I should contact them with my appeal. Well, considering this was my last resort in the first place, I had already detailed my previous exploits with the department heads and basically implored him for mercy because I had nowhere else to turn, so obviously this assistant didn't bother reading much more than the first line of my email. I can't say I really blame her, because she must have to weed through tons of those kinds of emails every day. Still, "unable to intervene?" Really? A particular line from the end of Aladdin springs to mind here: "Am I Sultan or am I Sultan?" Fortunately, I was able to acquire Billy's personal email address (it's helpful to have athletes as students, they have connections), and I sent him the same message at that address. After a week without getting a response, I resent the message, and he replied not five minutes after I sent that second message, telling me that he would look into it for me. I was actually very hopeful after that, until the next day when I realized that "I will look into this" meant "I'm going to dump this on Dr. Handjoint and have him deal with it." Obviously Dr. Handjoint's mind was already made up; I had been hoping that, after I thoroughly explained my situation to Billy, he would find it in his heart to grant me an exception, but hey, what's leadership without delegation? Oh and just as a brief aside, Billy's wife, who loves the students so much and acts as an advocate for them, was good enough to never respond to either of the two messages I sent her.

So, long story short, I just can't afford to come back. Of course there are other factors involved aside from the whole GA debacle, but were it not for that, I would be able to. At this point, it's time to bring up an old turning-point-in-your-life cliche: Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) by Green Day. I always got the "time of your life" aspect, and how you regard fondly the memories you've made along whatever journey you're just wrapping up, but I never quite understood why the song was titled "Good Riddance." It seemed the exact opposite of what the song represented. But now I think I get it, having reached a truly bittersweet crossroads in my life. As I said before, I did indeed have the time of my life at Liberty, but by leaving, I'm also saying "good riddance" to all the crap, crap that mostly manifested itself in this past year through pompous academia and pretentious "scholarly" work. As far as something unpredictable that in the end is right... well, I was planning on finishing my Master's at Liberty and didn't really see this coming till mid-May, so that was plenty unpredictable, and I really have no choice so it has to be right... I guess you could say that's time grabbing me by the wrist and directing me where to go as well. I'll have to make the best of this test without asking why... blah blah blah, I could dissect the song line by line, but you get the idea. The point is, I can now look back at Liberty and say "Man, I had the time of my life there," but also say "Good riddance," which, in a way, makes my departure a tiny bit easier. So props, Green Day. As if your song wasn't iconic enough, it now has my official endorsement. I'd say you've officially made it as a band now.

Anyway, I'm gonna miss Liberty a whole lot, probably more than I've missed any institution that I've ever left. Even in the past year, when my experience was somewhat different from the experiences of the first four years, I had a great time. I thoroughly enjoyed playing Mafia with the wily women of East 7, playing Catchphrase with those same women (who were not so deft at that particular game), and every single hilarious Ian-infused round of Apples to Apples ("It's ketchup AND mustard!"). The unexpected joys of sitting on the floor in convocation, actually having a good sister dorm for once, the Starcraft Era which evolved into the Age of Empires Society and the best breakfast I've ever had, and playing Magic in the twilight hours of the year are all experiences I will look back upon fondly. And being a Coms 101 GA... while I had my gripes with the way the program was run, I really loved being in the classroom with my students. I learned a lot about the difference between simply performing the duties of a teacher and actually encouraging learning, which is much different than the academic bigwigs would like to think... but that's another story. And don't even get me started on my four years of undergrad. I had so many amazing experiences during my time on Dorm 22-3 that attempting to encapsulate them here in just a few sentences would be an injustice. I think what I may do, purely for my own enjoyment and the entertainment of those who lived through those times, is start a series of blog posts devoted to stories from those days, with each post given its own story. That could be fun. Stay tuned.

The really funny thing is, like I said earlier, it hasn't really hit me yet, and I don't think it really will until the school year gets into full swing and I'm no longer there. This will be the first time I'll experience September in New York in five years. And to be honest, while Fall in upstate New York is second to none, I wish it could have been six years before I'd seen it again. One of the most depressing things is that I keep remembering, periodically throughout the day, that I am not going back. I'll be carrying out my daily activities when I come across something that reminds me of Liberty or the people there and think "I can't wait till I get back so I can... oh wait..." and it's rather crushing, honestly. A nugget of encouragement, however, comes from the fact that I am a big boy now, and I can go back to visit if I want to. Obviously the expense of a trip between Albany, NY and Lynchburg, VA is too great for me to be coming down every weekend, but I'm gonna try my best to make it to Liberty at least once before the coming semester is out, hopefully with Andrew Clark and maybe even Ryan Trammell at the same time.

For now, though, I don't want to drag this out too much longer. If you're reading this, and at some point in the future think back to any of the times when I went off on a wildly aggressive rant about anything that happened to be bothering me at any given time, check in on this blog; there's a good chance I'll be doing the same thing for a long while in digital form. But I think I've made my point here, and that is that I sorely grieve my premature departure, and I will miss everything and everybody I'm leaving behind at Liberty. Life will never be the same. Thanks for a great time guys.

Godspeed.

The Taco: Source of Endless Strife

At last, the moment you've all been waiting for: After a drought of a month and a half, I have returned to rock the blogosphere. Without a long-winded explanation for my sabbatical, I'll just proceed to the meat of the post - after all, you don't come here to listen to me make excuses.

Speaking of meat, yesterday was the 4th of July. How are the two related, you ask? For the holiday, my sister went to a friend's house to celebrate and spend the night. You can probably guess what kind of classic American food was served at this party: tacos. "Happy Independence Day everybody! In honor of the occasion, let's all have some patriotic Mexican food!" Seriously? Who does that? And as if that sleight against Americana wasn't enough, one of the girls at the party was a vegetarian, so she had a cheese quesadilla. I'll hold off on my vegetarian rant for now, but I'm telling you, it better be burgers, hot dogs, or other forms of grilled flesh on the 4th, kids, or you're doing something horribly wrong.

In the summer of 2000, I got this Arizona Jeans American Flag t-shirt, and I don't remember exactly what it said on it, but it was something along the lines of "100% American Made" something or other. It was designated my 4th of July shirt, and I wore it on the 4th of July every year starting that summer and all the way through the summer of 2008. Of course, it also got regular rotation year-round during my high school days, and so it's become reasonably worn since then. This year, I went to my dresser to get my shirt so I could celebrate the holiday properly... and it was nowhere to be found. I had to hurry up and get dressed (to take my sister to the aforementioned party, in fact), so I didn't have time to hunt around for it, and I wouldn't have had the slightest idea where to look anyway. Instead, I just threw on my red Old Navy t-shirt. This happens to be the very shirt that Andrew Clark gravely wounded toward the end of the Spring 2006 semester at Liberty when he lashed out violently at me after I had performed a rendition of his infamous Sub-Walk. Fortunately, thanks to the sewing efforts of my mom, the day was saved, and the shirt is alive and well to this day. Anyway, it's a solid red shirt, so I figured that combining it with my blue jeans and Yankee hat would create a red white and blue motif, suitable for the occasion. I was a bit sad in light of my broken streak, but then I remembered the circumstances surrounding the day. The 4th of July is meant to celebrate all that is American, and one thing that stands out to me as distinctly un-American is socialism. Thus, what better way to end the era of the longstanding patriotic 4th of July shirt than under the new reign of our wonderful President, Barack Obama? I found it to be a very fitting piece of symbolism, which made me feel better about my shirt... but not so much about the future of our country.

In other news, a few nights ago I was doing the dishes, and at the same time my mom was watching The Nanny on Nick at Nite in the kitchen, so I could hear the TV loud and clear from m post. I gathered that the episode they were airing was one of the last of the series, and the main character, Fran, was going into labor, about to push some babies out into the world. Now, the pain of childbirth is one of those things that women perennially complain about, and they always use their ability to withstand this pain as a means to tout their resilience and overall perceived superiority to men. Barring the testicular torsion argument, I've always conceded that giving birth must be incredibly painful and that women are to be granted this point in the Pain Threshold Challenge. The thought struck me while I was listening to this show, however, that women are notorious drama queens. Seriously, they make humongous deals out of the most trivial of occurrences; what proof do we have, then, that childbirth is indeed as painful as they make it out to be? It could all be a trumped up ploy designed to gain attention and garner the rendition of various other services in light of the allegedly traumatizing experience. The way women regularly react to mundane inconveniences is, in my mind, enough evidence to convince me of this. Of course, ladies, this is your cue to post indignant comments or harass me by a number of other more personal means for my egregious and unfounded attack on the integrity of the fairer sex. If you feel led in that direction, please, I encourage you to do so and prove my point for me.

I think that'll do it for this blog. I don't have any wise words or half-decent advice to offer tonight, and I'm really struggling with bringing this thing to a viable conclusion, so rather than just let it flail about pathetically, I think I'll just take this post out behind the shed and end its suffering here and now.

Come to think of it, I better get a gun while I still can.

You Seem To Take Premise To All Of These Songs

Well ladies and jellybeans, I'm back. I made my much-anticipated return to New York's Capital Region last Tuesday, May 12th, and now I've finally got enough down time to sit and organize the scattered thoughts I've collected since then. I began my work as a mercenary landscaper/general hired hand the day after I got back, and today was the first day I didn't spend at least five hours working for someone else. Instead, today I did work around my own house. I haven't gotten up later than 8 AM since before I left school, and the latest I've gotten to bed since I left Liberty is 1 AM. On Friday night, I was willfully in bed by 11:30. Talk about violating the sanctity. Add onto that all the time I spend at the Little League park and I've got quite the busy summer... and I've only been home for five days. What is the world coming to?

Speaking of the Little League park, on Friday night I was in the bleachers watching my 8 year old brother play. Earlier that evening, my 15 year old sister had asked me to take her to one of her high school get-togethers after the game, which was fine, but I did not know how to get where she needed to go, so I asked my mom for directions. As my dear sweet mother was laying them out for me and writing them down on a piece of paper, another lady right next to us in the stands asked us perplexedly, "You don't have a GPS?" Of course I was slightly irked at the surprise in her voice and the assumption that everyone has a GPS and that we were somehow culturally anomalous because we don't, but I let it slide. Then, the lady behind us went "Ah, MapQuest," and that's what really got me, because the intonation was such that she was basically saying "Ah, you poor unfortunate soul, I'm sorry to hear you're so technologically behind the times. May God have mercy on your soul." Hold the phone... are you actually lamenting the fact that we would have to resort to a convention such as MapQuest in lieu of a GPS system? I'm sorry, but the last time I checked, MapQuest itself is a pretty amazing technology. Think about it: you type in your start point and your intended destination, and it charts your course for you. All you have to do is follow the directions it lays out right there, plain as day. It blew my mind when I first learned about it in Computer Tech in the Fall of 2000. Sure, it would be great if I had a GPS and could just tell it to hold my hand all the way to Hoffman's Playland (which was where I was going, for the record), but since I don't, I guess I'll have to just go blow the dust off the ol' keyboard, get on the Internet, and manually plug my coordinates into MapQuest like they did in the olden times. Man, I can't even begin to imagine what it was like when people actually had to read maps for themselves... what a chore. Life in the Stone Age of the 20th Century must have been unbearable.

I don't know if you've ever heard of a band called 3OH!3, but their song "Don't Trust Me" is getting a fair amount of airplay on the radio right now. Interestingly enough, when I first heard it, I wasn't a fan, but I recall the words from the chorus of "Dead On Arrival," an old school Fall Out Boy classic: "The songs you grow to like never stick at first." How very true. At first I didn't like the song, I found it to be rather obnoxious, but it grew on me after I listened to it a few times, and now I love it. You ought to listen to it, and even if you don't like it initially, give it another shot. Who knows, it might turn out to be your favorite song.

Cough cough. Sorry, I almost choked on a bit of metaphor there.

Yesterday, I was at the park (and when I say "park" I mean the Little League park, for future reference), and I was on the 4:00 duty shift, as I will be every Saturday for the rest of the season. I had just finished selling 50-50 tickets and I was quite thirsty. Now, they charge $1.50 for a 20 ounce bottle of Coke at the concession stand, and anyone who knows me knows I am exceptionally frugal and would normally never pay such an exorbitant price for that quantity of liquid. But I thought about it, and the more I considered my options, the more appealing that Coke sounded, until I basically had to have one. I mean come on, their new slogan is "Open Happiness," and I felt like I could use some happiness. So I went down to the stand, slapped a dollar fifty down on the counter just like that guy in the commercial they show all the time at the dollar theater, and got myself a Coke. In so doing, I demonstrated a lesson I learned from that British guy in Confessions of a Shopaholic: there is a difference between cost and worth (okay, I've always known this, but since I saw that movie I keep finding ways for myself to apply it in my life). Sure, I think $1.50 is too much to charge for a 20 ounce bottle of soda, but at that point, I didn't care, I wanted that Coke, dangit. Plus, it never hurts to support the league. I headed upstairs to the announcing booth, cracked that puppy open, and let me tell you, that was the best tasting Coke I've ever had.

Well, it is now time for me to hang up my blogging hat for the time being, but hopefully I'll be able to make the digital rounds more often in the near future. Until then, keep the milk out of your shoes, kids. I've had milk spilled once in each of my shoes on separate occasions in the last week, and it is not a pleasant experience.

Great Cosmic Mouse Trap

Today I find myself sitting in the courtyard at a table by the flagpole, which itself is situated on the island that we use for the jail whenever we play Jailbreak. It's so beautiful outside I decided I'd sit here for a while, and having no other reason to perpetuate my stay, creation of a blog post seemed a viable option. I don't have much to say today, but it's been far too long since I posted a blog (nearly three weeks now), and I find the lack of other bloggery in this circle slightly less than satisfying, so I figured I might as well at least attempt to end the drought.

Lacking the meal swipes to go to the Rot for dinner (I have already used seven this week and need the other three for the forthcoming meals), I opted to go to the Hangar and pick up some Pizza Hut after our last Media Theory class of the semester, which is why I'm in the courtyard at this particular moment. There's basically no one else here; it was a little more populated when I first got my food, but in the last half hour pretty much everyone has cleared out. Man it's nice out... I've spent a good deal of time outside the last few days as a result, and a lot of that time has been spent wandering aimlessly around campus. I do enjoy walking very much, and with weather this good, I can't pass up the opportunity. Who knows when it's gonna rain again? And when it rains around here, it doesn't stop for days.

It is April 28th, and we are now two years removed from the glorious excursion that took place on the occasion we have dubbed "My Chemical Romance Day." Two years ago right now, myself, Andrew Clark, Ryan Trammell and his brother Kent, and Aaron Goslar were all awaiting the arrival of Muse on the stage at William and Mary, and while their show was certainly excellent, I had a feeling that the best was yet to come, and I was not wrong. My Chemical Romance blew me away, and to this day that has been one of the most exciting and entertaining experiences of my life.

My Pepsi and personal pan cheese pizza are now gone, leaving only the breadsticks and sauce that I am saving for when I get hungry after hall meeting. This will be the "white glove" hall meeting, the last of the year, where we are told (some of us for the 5th time now) the standards to which our rooms must be clean before we leave for the year. I can't believe the year is almost over. I remember the day we had our white glove hall meeting four years ago... a bunch of us went to East Campus to film ourselves doing stupid things on my video camera (a common pastime in those days), and then during our last prayer group, Phil John threw my Yankee hat out the window. Now I live on East Campus. My, how times have changed. Yet in some ways, they haven't. The mouse trap I refer to in the title is a fine example of this. "The best laid plans of mice and men..." As good as we think our ideas are, we're all gonna get caught in God's mouse trap sooner or later. This remains a constant, and it sure is funny. Funnier still is the fact that we never learn. The question is: is that cheese really worth it? If it is, maybe we won't have to skirt a trap to get to it.

See You In The Funny Papers

I'll start off by mentioning that this post was inspired by an exchange that occurred after convocation on Monday. I, after getting a typical answer to a typical question, decided that, instead of responding like I typically would, I would just let it go and stop trying to knock sense into people, because all it does is make me frustrated when they don't listen. Not long after (in fact, as I was walking up the stairs to leave the Vines Center), it struck me that by not attempting to promote what I believed to be right, instead of influencing other people for the better, I was, in my estimation, myself being influenced for the worse. My efforts up to this point had come and gone without effect, and I realized this. But then I realized on the way out of the Vines Center that not only had all my efforts been in vain, but I had finally been made to shut up. Effectively, I had lost, and with the realization that I would not be able make any kind of impact, I had lost for good.

But was I really the one who lost?

I pondered this as I sat in the 11:25 large lecture section of Coms 101, and when I heard Dr. Mullen say to the class in an example he was using to illustrate a point, "I appreciate the fact that you were brave enough to stand up for what you believe is right," I started tinkering with the idea a little more. Maybe I shouldn't view so many things in life as a battle, maybe my aggressive side and my desire for victory distorts things to beyond a reasonable point. But if you look at everything as though it were a fight, a struggle between the way things are and the way they should be, then maybe you have a better chance of actually making things the way they should be. Plus, it makes life seem a lot less meaningless and a lot more epic.

But then I think of the futility espoused in the fight itself. Just because it's something worth fighting for doesn't mean you can necessarily make a real difference. You can try and try to explain things to people, and sometimes it just won't get through, and that's just a minor, reasonably inconsequential example of the overarching point. When you reach that stage, maybe it is best to just give up, because your efforts are being wasted anyway. The world is a terrible place, and in the end, try as we might, there's really nothing any of us can do to make it any better. Maybe it's best to do what we can, what is necessary, let everyone else hang themselves, and grin and bear it.

If everyone would get over that one sex scene that has essentially branded Watchmen as Evil: The Movie among the Christian crowd, maybe people could realize that not only is Watchmen very deep on a literary and artistic level, but there is also a lot of wisdom to be found within the book (and movie, since the movie was an impeccably faithful adaptation). The two mindsets I described in the previous paragraphs encapsulate bits of the worldviews of Rorschach and The Comedian, respectively. This is something I wonder about frequently, and I can't decide which one is right. Rorschach, though only one man, did everything he could to protect the innocent and impose justice upon wrongdoers; it was essentially his sole purpose in life. I have great respect for him, even though he was a fictional character, because he stuck with his principles until the very end, and did not compromise, "even in the face of Armageddon." Edward Blake, The Comedian, on the other hand, didn't have such a strictly defined view of the way things should be. He was the ultimate realist; he saw things as they are, irreparably terrible, and acted accordingly. He did what was necessary to get whatever job that was at hand done, regardless of the consequences, because ultimately, the world was still the same messed up place it was before, and nothing he could do would change that fact. He saw humanity's savage nature, and knew that any attempt to fix it was just a joke.

As a brief aside, I've heard criticism of The Comedian's character, saying he was a jerk and that he was "not funny." Very true, he did some awful things, but that's part of what makes his character so interesting. His very existence was a play on what it is to be a hero, because he committed some despicable deeds while still being a "good guy." And true, he was not funny, but that's the point. He wasn't The Joker. The point was that he understood the great cosmic joke, he was in on it, he got why everything we do is so funny, and remembering this actually puts a smile on my face even when things seem awful. To an outsider, the futility of many of our daily endeavors would seem hilarious. Consider this: many of the funniest movies involve what we would consider, were we going through them, terrible hardships, or at the very least major inconveniences. Take a movie like National Lampoon's Vacation. It's so funny because it's not happening to us. Edward Blake grasped this, and decided he'd rather be in on the gag: "Once you figure out what a joke everything is, being The Comedian's the only thing makes sense." It helps put things in perspective.

I wish I were more like Rorschach, but in truth, I think I'm more like The Comedian, and on even more levels than I can address here. But even Rorschach, the most morally convicted and honorable character, who was completely right throughout the entirety of the story, acknowledged that The Comedian saw things the right way:

We do what we have to do. Others bury their heads between the swollen teats of indulgence and gratification, piglets squirming beneath a sow for shelter... but there is no shelter... and the future is bearing down like an express train. Blake understood. Treated it like a joke, but he understood. He saw the cracks in society, saw the little men in masks trying to hold it together... he saw the true face of the twentieth century and chose to become a reflection, a parody of it. No one else saw the joke. That's why he was lonely.

The issue I addressed at the beginning is of little importance, and in truth, was actually of little consequence, but the basic principle remains the same. I know I'm not the only one out there dealing with this kind of thing, whether to fight for what you believe in or just laugh it off and let people screw themselves over, reassured by the fact that you were actually right. Personally, I think the latter option is more practical, not because I've been defeated, but because I've realized the futility of the struggle in the face of an unfixable circumstance, and indeed, even its inherent humor.

And the punchline to the joke is asking, 'Someone save us.'
-My Chemical Romance