Chili XXX

https://youtu.be/dFHjlWrxO6A

The preceding video is my final presentation for IST 646.  In it, I use video, narration, photos, music, sound, and LOTS of transitions.  It's been a few years since I worked on something this involved, and wish I had more footage.

What I ended up with is pretty good, but the narration ends abruptly, otherwise I think it's great.  I hope you enjoy it as well, and I think I should probably load this onto my chili blog right after finishing this post.

This process was definitely time-consuming - shooting the video took an entire evening, editing it took me days, and finishing the written aspect of our final presentation should take me at least a few more hours.  There is some footage that I wasn't able to get - anyone actually eating the chili - because my toddler missed his nap and was being, for lack of a better term, quite a handful.  I also wish I got more footage of toppings and of my wife's cooking.  But I made do with what I had, and the result really isn't worse off for it.

Lastly, I forgot to say that I add 6 cloves of garlic!  I can't believe I forgot that one!

The Future of Storytelling

How do I see my own role in the future of storytelling, digital and/or oral?

I don’t see myself as a storyteller.  I think of what I do here more as a keeper of my own personal public record or an auto-documentary of sorts.  None of my posts reflect traditional storytelling structure, many do not have any lessons or morals, but they all seem to have just one thing in common: me.  If anyone out there is interested in what I have to say, then this is the only place to go.  While there may not be a demand for that sort of thing commercially, surely friends and family can get something out of it.  This is a personal record, and will probably be a great place to get inspiration for anyone writing my obituary.

So no, I don’t see myself having much of a future as an oral storyteller.  While I read to my son every day, I certainly am not going to turn this into a career.  Digitally, the stories I will probably tell most often will be how-to videos about placing inter-library loan holds.  Five years ago, I would have said that I wanted to be a digital storyteller, but now I want to be a librarian.  Now, I see myself as more of a story keeper than a teller, and I’m just fine with that. 

I hope that I keep up with my blog posts after this class ends.  I’ve been on here almost weekly for a little over a month, and looking at my recent activity, that’s more than the last five years combined in posts.  At the same time, I can’t justify spending time on something that is viewed so infrequently when I have what can best be described as a “butt load” of homework to do before the end of May 2016.  So, like all my other projects, I will continue to chant “May 2016” when anyone asks when I will get things done.  I’m busy now?  Just find me in May 2016 to find out what busy REALLY means. 

I will post my final project on here when it’s done.  Hopefully that’s not the last this blog ever sees of me, but if it is, then I’ll say thanks for reading and have a great day!

Popping the Question

This is my midterm project for my 'Storytelling' class at SU.

This is not the story I attempted to tell.  The first attempt at this was with video, not still images, and I was using FinalCutPro to edit.  It turns out, my version of FCP cannot handle High Definition video, and my laptop cannot handle the latest version of FCP.  So after a full day's work, I had to scrap the project.  I tried editing in other programs, but nothing gave me what I needed for the price I was willing to pay (nothing).

I may end up using that footage for an extra credit assignment, as the voiceover has already been recorded and music synced.  There is a computer lab where I work that has the software and equipment I need to finish it up.  Here's hoping!

On to this assignment.  It's fairly basic, I used Audacity (which I'm really enjoying more every time I use it) for audio and WeVideo to throw it together with pictures.

The story speaks for itself, and it's two minutes long, so I'll just let you see for yourself.

Silverstein's Engine

The following is from Shel Silverstein's 'Where the Sidewalk Ends,' and was completed through an assignment for my Digital Storytelling class at Syracuse University.  

First, I chose to read from this book because I thought it would lend itself well to my assignment of a self-contained story in 60 seconds, and in reading through the entire book today, this one was perfect in length and lent itself very well to easy-to-find sound effects.  

I recorded the audio using my computer's built-in microphone, which is frowned upon professionally.  I attempted to use an external mic, but after hours of fiddling with it both on my laptop and a nearby desktop, I decided to see how awful the laptop's mic would sound.  It turns out, it sounds great!  

In the background are files from freesound.org, I knew I wanted some train sounds, but ended up book-ending some birds chirping for a nice outdoor feel.  Of course (spoiler alert!) there's a big crash sound in there too.

I used Audacity for mixing.  Initially, I tried Final Cut Pro but having not done this level of sound mixing, I decided to use the other program as there was a 30-minute tailor-made tutorial of how to do this project.  Of course, there was a lot to learn, and I'm very happy that I have a little bit of a background in video editing, and Audacity was very similar to Final Cut in many ways.  That being said, the longest part of this assignment was tweaking the audio.  

I also ended up using buzzsprout.org to upload the audio as Blogger would not allow a straight-up audio upload.  I didn't include a song, as anything I could think of was either irrelevant or distracting.  I know the assignment required it, but instead I threw in three sound effects that are under my reading for the entirety of the piece.

Was this a boring post?  Probably, unless you're my professor or a classmate, then you might find this interesting.  Everybody should give that one-minute story a listen.  Even if you don't like my voice, the Shyamalan twist at the 50-second mark is a doozy!  

Writing

I was about 7 or 8 years old when my parents brought home our first computer.  I don’t know what kind of computer it was, but I do know that it pre-dated the internet by a few years. I mostly used it to play games, and we had two games - neither of which I remember well but know that each game required multiple floppy discs.  Because we didn’t know what to do with this computer, it was housed in our basement, a scary, dimly-lit room that constantly smelled like wet farts.  While that description may seem unnecessarily crass, I mean it quite literally.  There was a sump pump issue that created excess moisture and a fully-functional toilet behind a half wall in the corner.  In a family of four, this toilet was a life-saver, but made for an otherwise unpleasant atmosphere.

On our basement computer, I somehow got it into my head that I could write a story.  I think it took me a few hours, but in the end I typed about a page of a manuscript that was about a magic sword that flew, a boy, and a castle.  I no longer have this story and am pretty sure it’s just the plot to Disney’s “The Black Cauldron” but shorter, more incomprehensible, and littered with grammatical errors.  While it’s easy to see where my inspiration came from at that age, I did not pursue typing any further until after I took a keyboarding class.  

Of course I wrote and typed in school.  I did not consider keeping a journal or a blog until after flunking out of college for the second time.  After college, I had a computer without the internet and not much to do with it.  I still read books and was very much a fan of David Sedaris and Maddox’s web site.  Trying to emulate them, I somehow landed a non-paying gig reviewing new CDs for a local music store’s website.  I started writing not as Travis Olivera, but as “The Chopper,” for reasons I no longer remember, but it is a nickname that persists 13 years later.

I started writing with my friend John Nagy (who is no longer with us), and started a blogging website called “EmployeesMustWashHands.com” (that is no longer with us).  Nagy wrote under the pseudonym “Rumpo” and together we achieved very little, save our own amusement.  Having this freedom to write helped me decide to go back to college, and to eventually study journalism to learn how to write, something that for some reason never interested me in the past.

I was a General Studies major at the local community college in Utica, Mohawk Valley Community College.  There, I started to find my voice submitting fashion reviews (from the perspective of someone who does not understand or appreciate fashion) and reporting on news written on the inside of campus bathroom walls in the student newspaper.  Eventually I took a job at that newspaper, somehow thinking that I could do a better job than the people that were running it.  I was wrong.  Even helping publish a lackluster weekly newspaper is an enormous amount of work, and left little room for writing.  Additionally, it was impossible to please everyone and was a frustrating experience overall.  

At this point, I transferred to SUNY Purchase, in White Plains, NY, and changed my major to Journalism.  There, I took a course called “Creative Non-Fiction,” which further explored my ‘blog’ writing, but didn’t really help with my journalism writing.  The assignments and due dates helped me really focus more on writing differently and using different subjects.  I was still writing opinion pieces, but no newspaper would ever publish a 10-page editorial about why Billy Joel is terrible.  

Outside of class, right before I left for Purchase, I met the girl who I would eventually marry.  Of course, she stayed in Utica while I spent that semester away.  The two of us spoke on the phone frequently but also kept a journal between the two of us - she would keep it and write in it for a week, then when we saw each other on the weekends we would hand the journal off.  It was like a dual diary, and it allowed us to really explore what was meaningful to us for an audience of one.  Purchase, for me, was one of the only times in my life where I felt true solitude.  I would go to the library there daily and check out different religious texts and philosophical works and it really helped shape the person I was to become.  All of this is documented thoroughly in that journal, along with transcriptions of conversations between pretentious art students.

My college journey led me back to Central New York, where I attended Utica College (UC).  I never considered going to there, but my wife worked in the admissions office and processed my application for free.  Since they offered me a better deal than I was getting at SUNY Purchase, I moved back home.

At UC I became completely engrossed in all things Journalism.  I worked at the student newspaper and was a staff writer, online editor, and photo editor by the time I left.  I stopped writing entertaining pieces to concentrate on news articles.  It left me unfulfilled creatively, but my output was impressive.  Weekly stories and deadlines about dull topics took the place of the multi-page essays about my experiences in a wedding band.  I eventually grew to dislike Journalism, but not before sinking my teeth into an interesting story where our newspapers were allegedly stolen by a staff member.  

After graduating, if I wanted to do anything related to Journalism, it would be to shoot and edit video, not write for a newspaper.  I did take away some important lessons from my time as a journalism student, which are:

• Read what you write out loud before submitting
• Don’t rely on other people to do your work for you
• If you HAVE to rely on someone, annoy them until you get what you need

Between my fulfilling relationship with my wife and working a few jobs, I was too burned out to keep up a blog, and I wrote very little here after 2011.  A few months ago when Rumpo passed away, I decided the best way for me to honor and remember him would be to write it down in the blog that he is partially responsible for.  Now, it seems I’m writing in here again not to fulfill any spiritual need, but because of assignments.  While that may be a partial drag, if I didn’t tell you that, you probably wouldn’t have noticed the difference.  

After this six-week course, who knows, maybe I’ll go back and finish my book about the boy and the magic sword.  

Chili, a Podcast

I had to try my hand at podcasting.  Using a story from my other blog, "Chili, a Life," (http://chilialife.blogspot.com/), I attempted voiceover despite losing my voice almost completely two nights ago at a TV on the Radio/Pixies concert in Cooperstown, NY.

The chili blog is a project that I all but abandoned years ago, but there are still recent handwritten notes about my process.  Will I ever update it again?  Only time will tell.  To hear more about it, click on this podcast:

http://travis-l-olivera.podomatic.com/entry/2015-05-24T07_25_37-07_00

As an afterward, consider reading my other blog posts about chili.  Since I never update I'll just say that I'm approaching Chili XXX (30), and I have entered and lost two chili cook offs.  

Thanks for reading, and a special thank you to those of you who are not reading this as a required part of our discussion grade!

Steve Jobs as a Storyteller

https://youtu.be/UF8uR6Z6KLc

In Part 1 of this module, you viewed a video of the late Steve Jobs telling three personal stories at a commencement in 2005. Please use your blog to discuss what makes his stories memorable. What makes them powerful? You may find reading the transcript of his speech to be useful in thinking about these questions. When you have completed your blog posting, please provide the link to us and the topic selected within this thread.

Steve Jobs is undeniably a great public speaker and storyteller.  His stories are relatable to everyone, and it’s always impressive to hear someone who is that far removed from everyday blue collar workers telling stories about his life that people can understand.  What these three examples of Jobs’ storytelling powerful, I think, is that they are essentially subtle Buddhist tracts.

His first story is about loss and finding one’s true identity.  That loss is his college career, and he uses that loss to grow and become the man who will found Apple shortly thereafter.  His second story also deals with loss, which he mentions in the story’s preface.  Again, he uses this failure to drive him to become a better person.  His third story is about death, or at least the prospect of it.  He eventually weaves his cancer diagnosis into a tale about following your dreams.  

On paper, the topics of these stories don’t relate very well to their lessons, but Jobs effortlessly creates threads between them in a way that you wouldn’t expect.  I mentioned Buddhism above, as Jobs is a noted Buddhist, he follows the idea that pain and suffering are unavoidable aspects of life - through this pain and suffering people can experience true growth.  This is basically the thesis of his speech.  

Content aside, he is pleasant to listen to.  I doubt many Fortune-500 Presidents or Commencement Addresses are as timeless and interesting as this one.  That’s really what makes this special.  Despite being a mogul in the technology industry, he makes sure that this advice will still work 100 years in the future.  Unlike his products that need to be upgraded almost annually, this speech will stand the test of time.  I think that really illustrates the importance of storytelling - my iPod won’t be around by the time I graduate, but this speech will resonate with me forever.  True connections are made through human interaction, not USB cables.

Disclaimer

Dear three old blog readers and classmates,

I am enrolled in a program through Syracuse University to get my Master’s degree in Library and Information Sciences.  As part of one of my classes I am required to blog.  Because I am lazy, I’ll just use blogger here to fulfill this requirement.  This means regular readers will be subjected to my thoughts on a number of specific subjects, and new readers will be tempted to read my thoughts on a number of issues that happened years ago.  I don’t know which is worse, but I’ll let time decide.  Who knows, maybe some of these old blog posts will be helpful in my course on storytelling!  

Sincerely,

Blogger ID 8364064622254861907

John "Rumpo" Nagy, 1982-2015

John Nagy was a classmate of mine at Waterville Central School from Kindergarten to 12th grade, and one of those guys who was genuinely liked by everyone.  He grew up to be a tall, confident, handsome paramedic/firefighter, but in the mid ‘90s, he was short, scrawny and bespectacled.  Back then he was the epitome of a nerd, but had this quirky, disarming sense of humor that would make him an impossible target of bullying.  Most Watervillians our age remember him as the kid who wrote and illustrated “Java Duck,” a bizarre semi-daily comic strip starring, if memory serves correct, a duck who drank coffee.  To an outsider, this may sound strange but it was a BIG DEAL in middle school.  I didn't get to know him well until we both rode the bench on the modified soccer team.  Neither of us were particularly skilled at - or cared about - soccer, but we left that bench warmer after every game. He was the main source of comic relief during those cold Fall days, and inside jokes like “Noah’s Ark wood” and “cleats angry!” always elicited a colorful response from our coach.

After high school, I flunked out of two colleges and wasn’t sure what I was going to do with my life.  Antidepressants weren’t working, I lacked interest in just about everything, and I lost contact with all my college friends.  During this time I found myself frequenting the Waterville Area Volunteer Ambulance Corps (WAVAC) bay, because they had a good group of people hanging out there, and because they had a big TV.  Nagy was a constant presence there and he, along with other friends, attempted to get me to become a member of WAVAC and signed me up for an EMT class.  Being an EMT wasn’t really for me though, and I was pretty relieved when I failed the written exam.  

I didn’t really notice, but at some point he became one of my closest friends.  For guys, that usually means watching and making fun of a shitty movie and eating equally shitty microwave pizza.  I remember multiple occasions when I would get out of work, stop at his apartment on the way home, watch Sealab, go home, then he would come over like an hour later.  It wasn’t every day, but the time added up.  We played Grand Theft Auto, ate beef jerky, and recommended books to each other.  For a while, that’s just how things went.  

I started writing around this time too.  I was heavily influenced by David Sedaris and Maddox, which inspired me to write partially witty and unnecessarily misogynistic CD reviews.  I actually landed a gig writing weekly reviews for a local music store’s e-newsletter, where I was paid $15/week in used CD credit.  Nagy liked my writing, and in our spare time the two of us created a website.  We named the site after our shared love of petty larceny, specifically taking place in restaurant bathrooms.  “EmployeesMustWashHands.com” was where we both posted rants and reflections as “The Chopper” (me) and “Rumpo” (Nagy).  I did most of the writing, but he was the kind of guy that somehow knew how computers and web design worked.  That was handy.  We sold some t-shirts, went on photo assignments, reviewed movies, and enjoyed spending time on it.  We were our own biggest fans.  While we pushed each other to improve and write more often, we couldn’t justify spending any money on the domain name after about a year if the audience consisted of the two of us.  He is one of the only people I can credit with getting me back on my feet, which led me to a degree in journalism years later.

Somehow, we, along with Jarod Petrie (another Waterville classmate, soccer bench warmer, EMT, and friend) got the opportunity to move into a house together.  It literally brought us closer together and figuratively drove us apart.  Living with someone can be difficult - dishes are left dirty for weeks, someone uses up all the shampoo, your leftovers disappear - that kind of spiteful pettiness can strain even the best relationships.  Often, Nagy would prank me and/or Petrie by doing things like leaving thumb tacks in my bed or writing racial slurs on the soap dispenser.  It was memorable but less than endearing.  This living situation lasted maybe a year, and by the time the we moved out I think we all needed a break from each other.  Shortly thereafter, I had also begun smoking weed and my priorities for friends shifted from “friends” to “friends that had weed.”  Since Petrie and Nagy didn’t fit into the latter friend category, it was even less likely that we would hang out.  

I saw Nagy a few years ago at Hannaford in New Hartford, I introduced him to my wife and we said we should meet up sometime.  I think we talked about chili.  We didn’t meet up - that was the last we saw each other. I’ve noticed that when you start smoking weed you leave your old friends, and when you stop smoking weed you leave the new ones.  So do ever you call up your old crew to hang out and ask, “I’m done with weed now, guys - wanna catch a flick this weekend?”  No.  Instead you just have awkward, random interactions at the grocery store years later and feign interest in getting back in touch.

I try not to have regrets in life, because there’s nothing that I can do about them.  I rationalize anything potentially regrettable as a necessary stumbling block to becoming the person I am today.  That being said, I wish that we spent more time together.  But I guess wishing you had more time with a friend is a pretty good way to leave things.  

Rumpo was one of a kind.  Without him I wouldn’t be where I am today.  He knew how to make the best of a bad situation.  He stuck by me when I was at my worst and pushed me to be a better person - I imagine that’s what made him a great paramedic.  He sort of turned "sticking by people when they were at their worst" into a career.  And I, along with all those people he helped professionally, are much better off for having known him.

God Dream It!

I'm not an atheist. For me, the jury's out when it comes to the whole 'God' thing. I've always found that every argument is equally compelling for and against His existence, and I'm not really going to go into either, except one.

A little over a week ago, I had a dream that God proved He existed.

Okay, you're saying. That's fine. But how did he prove it? Well, it was basically the plot of the movie Pi, but more personal because it was inside my head. The short of it is that mathematically, things that can be proven and infinite are God's way of saying 'Hello!' Like how Pi is an infinite expression and it's this one perfect imperfect number that makes a perfect shape, a shape that is undoubtedly replicated naturally everywhere just like other patterns and shapes are replicated infinitely in nature (a blood stream resembles tree branches in the winter that resemble the delta of even our most impressive rivers...).

I've thought about this before, so it wasn't a new concept from me. Kind of like in Animal House when Pinto realizes that an atom resembles the solar system when he's high - it's not exactly a religion, but it does get the mind goin'.

So I had this dream, right? And I woke up thinking that from this point I had two explanations for myself.

1) God exists. And He just sent me a personal message proving this or

2) Random synapses were firing in my brain, triggering my own emotional past and a bunch of shit from movies I've seen a few too many times.

If the former is true, and Heaven and Hell and Noah and the Ark exist, then I'll try to be all like "yeah, I believed after that dream, I just didn't wanna get all 'preachy'" but they'll know the truth, 'cause they're angels and shit. So I'll end up in Hell, listening to Kenny G and eating poop burgers for eternity.

If the latter is true, then who gives a shit! I'll be dead and it won't matter.

So I guess I should believe in God for now, until proven otherwise. I don't know if He's as into Us as We are into Him. In my opinion, if there is a God, He doesn't really care all that much about us either way. I put it like this once to Marissa. God is like the inventor of the pretzel. The guy who invented the pretzel just put a knot in some bread, salted it and called it a day. The pretzels today resemble that prototype, and in a way, many of them are almost exact. But then there are other types that are classified as pretzels that more closely resemble chicken wings or cardboard. Or puke.

What I'm saying is that God may have started this whole 'creation' thing, and that would be a reasonable explanation for how everything got here, but the 'why' may have just been an accident, and He may not have even noticed we're here yet, evolving into the terrible beings we have become.

That might be why come 2012, the Mayans predict the world will end. God would look down and be all "Holy shit, where'd all this come from? Sorry about that, Earth. Fuckin' Devil and his pointy tail and horns. I'll fix this." And then the oceans will swallow the sky and that will be that.

The Greatest Show on Earth

I'm not one for professional sports. Or, for that matter, sports at all. I plan on having a quiet night at home on Superbowl Sunday and sports might play a part inasmuch as the cats might wrestle or something. That would be nice.

This whole Superbowl thing. I mean, I don't even see the merit in "watching it for the commercials" any more. I'm not the only person who won't be watching The Big Game, of course. There's homeless people, hipsters, foreigners and the mentally-challenged, to name a few. We non-Bowlies also probably don't go head-over-heels for other culturally-defining events like, the State of the Union Address or American Idol, but I digress. I would say the homosexuals aren't into the game, but come on. This is a huge spectacle, Christina Aguilera is singing the Star-Spangled Banner, there's going to be a half-time show with the Black Eyed Peas and to top it off, Football is just about the gayest sport out there (just close your eyes and listen to the announcers for ten minutes and TRY not to think of it with homoerotic undertones).

But really, what AM I trying to say?

I meant to segue from 'I don't like sports' to 'The Harlem Globetrotters put on one hell of a show.' So let's just assume I did just that and move on.

I took the wife to see the famed comedy/basketball team last night and, well... It. Was. AMAZING. I surprised her with tickets after taking her out for sushi and we both loved every minute. Not because it was the best thing we'd ever seen, but in the same way you just have to appreciate the movie 'Blade.' Is it the best movie ever? No. Will you ever forget Wesley Snipes delivering the line "Some mothafuckas always be tryin' to ice-skate uphill" for no apparent reason? Also no.

So let's backtrack for a second. When the wife and I were just boyfriend and girlfriend, we were in line at the Bagel Grove and saw the next month's list of Utica events on a calendar. I asked, "If you had to, which of these would you want to see if you could only pick one?" Almost immediately, she replied 'The Harlem Globetrotters,' and then added that she also was pretty unfamiliar with what she answered. I told her a little about the event and she was very interested. Unfortunately, this was six years ago and for one reason or another, we had never gotten a chance to see the self-proclaimed 'World Famous' basketball team.

So last night, I surprised her. We were both very, very excited when we got to the Utica Memorial Auditorium and even happier when we saw that our seats were fucking PRIMO.

If you have never seen the Globetrotters, put it on your 'life list.' If you don't have a 'life list,' get a piece of paper and a pen, write 'LIFE LIST' on the top and then in the left-hand margin (your left, not the paper's) write the number one. Circle that number. Then to the right of that number just write 'Harlem Globetrotters.' Now underline it. You may repeat that last step for emphasis. Don't worry, when you find this list later, you'll know precisely what it means.

Okay, I don't want to spoil it for you Globetrotter virgins, but let me tell you, these guys can play some fucking basketball! And what showmanship! What I liked most about it as an adult was noticing the subtle actions by the refs, the team managers, and most of all, the Washington Generals. How embarrassing it must be to be a General. Getting booed all night, every night, and never winning a game. Oh well, they should probably just fire their coach. It was his fault we were booing them. The nerve of him accurately describing the condition of our fair city - comparing it to a toilet and saying we should be embarrassed to live here. Yeah it's true, but it's like he wasn't even trying to get on our good side. I'm glad they lost. They played like shit anyway. All the 'Trotters (I'm allowed to use that word because I've seen them) literally dribbled circles around them. I'm surprised how close the game ended up though.

The best part of all was the complete disregard for every basketball rule I had ever learned. And right in the middle of a play, there would be 'bits,' like the "steal-the-purse-from-a-spectator" bit and the "skip-across-the-court-with-a-little-girl" bit that I remember from when I was a kid, but what I appreciated most was a prize. See, during one of the longer breaks from the action, this man came up and if he succeeded in making a lay-up, a free-throw, and a three-pointer, he would win....

A ticket to ANYWHERE in the Continental United States...

on a Greyhound bus.

I don't know about you, but that sounds like a pretty inconvenient prize. I mean, if it were me, I would probably just take it to Albany or something. I don't really want to be on a bus, even a nice bus, for too long. Do people even still take the bus? Not that there's anything wrong with taking the bus, but at least give this guy a headband or something. But he made the shots. Surprisingly enough, the one he had the most trouble with was the lay-up.

Is that how you type 'lay-up'? I mean, that's what I've been writing, but that doesn't necessarily make it so. I didn't look it up, and 'layup' just looks wrong.

So on to the moral of this story. Just go see the World Famous Harlem Globetrotters some day and experience it for yourself. I mean, what else are you going to do on a Wednesday night during a blizzard on Groundhog's Day?

The Music of the Masses

I just went to lunch at Nola's Cafe in Clinton. It was delicious.

Being married, I haven't had the opportunity to sit alone and have lunch all that much. It's always expected of me to go with the wife, you know, out of common courtesy and all that. I love going out with my wife. We love each other and she's just a pleasant human being to have lunch with. But lately I haven't had the time to dine alone and I forgot how much I enjoy it.

There have been periods of my life which I was utterly alone, and being alone for most of the time makes you not appreciate the times when it's just delightful. When you live alone, go to the movies alone, drive to work alone, have no one to talk to and eat alone, it's not that special. Yes, of course there are friends - I don't mean to say that I wasn't surrounded by friends and family when I wanted, but I didn't notice how swell loneliness can be when I was utterly consumed by it.

What struck me today was, for the first time in a while, I heard people as an orchestra surrounding me, and I haven't heard that in a long time.

Let me explain.

When I first started going out, drinking and, naturally, smoking a bit of weed, I would just sit on a leather couch on the second floor of Space 26 (Utica's most non-'Utica' bar and because of that, Utica's most 'Utica' bar too) and listen to the crowd. Above the dance music the conversations of a room of 50 sounded like a song of its own. The women pitched low and high with whatever story they felt compelled to shout to one another blended with the men loudly requesting another drink from the bartender, all with greetings and introductions of friends to make one seemingly endless verse with no chorus.

It wasn't exactly something you could tap your toes to, but all this nonsense was certainly something that passed the time. And it only worked when I didn't focus in on any words in particular. If I recognized or heard one sentence or conversation above the others, it just didn't sound right. This wasn't a concerto; it was a symphony.

Anyway, this was something I would do when I just wanted to be away from all the stories I'd heard ten times before or avoiding that person from High School who's name I forgot. It was something that was mine that I could half-drunkenly stumble to and smirk about alone on the couch. I explained this to one of my friends once and after she laughed at me, I saw in her eyes that she recognized what I had heard. I think people always assumed I was depressed up there, but in actuality I was happier than I was at most times. It was a discovery of mine, but like most discoveries of the 21st Century, it's probably already been discovered a number of times.

I never forgot about this real-life orchestra, but it moved behind all the other stuff I've concerned myself with throughout the years.

Today, I heard it again while I was enjoying a book at Nola's. At first it was the usual eavesdropping of inane conversations, like "You just wouldn't believe what my Shawn can do now..." and "It's pretty cold out, huh?..." and so on. When I got into my book, the words around me blended together and I heard the unintended music.

Well, I have to get to work.

I would not have published this blog, but perhaps your standards aren't quite as high as mine. And I told myself that this year I would post more often, because I won't improve my writing unless I actually write something that's not an e-mail.

Was there more to this story? Did I leave any loose ends?

It doesn't matter. What matters is I posted, and I feel damn good about it.

And yeah, I admit to smoking weed for a period of time in my life. I can talk about it now though, because I can pass a drug test, and because smoking weed now just gives me the inspiration to clean my apartment to the point where I'm not stoned any more. And that's not very fun so I stopped.

I usually try to wrap up these posts with something that brings in the story full-circle. Guess that's not going to happen. I'm really out of practice.

Just Looking.

How many applications am I going to send out before someone shows any interest? Of the dozens of resumes and cover letters, I've gotten maybe two or three interviews. And those, I feel, are only polite responses to organizations where I have connections. It's gotten to the point where I am brutally honest in the first paragraph of my cover letters, immediately admitting the fact that I have very little chance of landing this job but am applying on nothing more than a whim. It's like I'm window-shopping on my future. I've applied at banks, libraries, production companies and news organizations. So far, it's still retail.

On top of all that, my video production has hit a roadblock. I bought a new MacBook Pro to edit with and my software is too old to be used on that machine. Now, I have to buy a newer version of Final Cut Pro that will end up costing around $300! Gah!

I suppose that's enough complaining for now, internet. I could go on, but I'll keep it to professional issues for now. But if you only knew what I was going through on top of all this...
all this pain makes me understand Buddhism. But it's not like I'm suffering like the people of Haiti before or after the earthquake. Again, if I put it into a bigger perspective, my problems seem pretty insignificant and self-centered.

I should really blog more. Looking at the amount of posts annually, I'm in a steady decline. Maybe if I typed through all my shit, I'd feel better than I do just stewing in it. Even if nobody reads this, it's the most therapeutic thing I know.

Until next time, this has been one unhappy dude.

Mostly Vegetarian

I'm an impressionable guy with strong convictions. It may be hard to win me over, but once you do, I can be pretty committed to whatever it is you were arguing for in the first place. More often than not, it isn't conversation or movies that win me over - it's books.

Two of the most important books, at least in my life so far, have been the Communist Manifesto and the Tao Te Ching. Both are hardly long enough to be called books, more like "manifestoes," and are brilliant because of their vagueness. By not getting too specific about anything, they are very relatable to life in every era. Neither are perfect, but both have changed my view of the world and had a deep impact on who I am as a person.

But these aren't the only books that have had an impact on me. From time to time, I come across one that really gets me to thinking; whether it's opening my eyes to the life of a boy in the Sudan (What Is the What) or making me question religious dogma or war (Cat's Cradle), completing a good book makes me (in my own mind at least) a better person.

This time, a book has really had an affect on me enough to change my daily habits, and because of it, I'm mostly vegetarian. I know that by using the qualifier "mostly" I'm leaving some space to slip up, but I don't think it's like being a "mostly" non-smoker or anything. I'm just cutting out all meat that has possibly been produced in a factory farm.

So this book that got me thinking is called "Eating Animals," and is something that I would never have picked up had it not been for the author, whose two previous novels "Everything Is Illuminated" and "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" are everything I want in a book and then some. Jonathan Safran-Foer, wherever he is, has had more of an impact on my life than my college education (and cheaper, too!). Back to this book, it's basically an investigative piece into the practice of factory farming, which is so bad for everything I can't even bring myself to finish off the bacon in my freezer. Foer also goes into the reasons behind his own diet and argues for and against both sides.

But this isn't a book review. That's just what got me started on my new and exciting lifestyle. No, I'm not even being sarcastic about the "new" and "exciting" parts. Every time I eat, I think about every ingredient and get excited about finding new foods. I even tried to cook the other night! (Of course, it took me about twenty minutes to mince garlic and thankfully, Marissa came to my rescue and worked the food processor for me. Thanks, Marissa.)

I just want to say this right now. I'm not a vegetarian. I'm still a sucker for a good piece of cheese, a hard-boiled egg and even a burger. I just need to make sure all those things come from a local farm where the chickens and cows aren't treated like commodities and the bottom line has nothing to do with saving (and making) money and more on what's healthy. I have never been an animal activist, and this lifestyle doesn't even require me to be one. There are so many reasons to care about where my meat comes from that caring about animals being slaughtered (humanely) is only the tip of the iceberg. Consider the cost of a dozen eggs at Wal-Mart. They're a dollar. And those eggs are already more healthy than those used in fast-food restaurants, which are even healthier than those used in elementary school cafeterias. But even Hannaford eggs are made from chickens who are forced to be pregnant throughout their entire (extremely short and disease-ridden) lives, and who are given no more than the size of your computer monitor's space to live their (painful, antibiotic-filled) lives. The ones that "live," anyway. The unlucky (see also: lucky) ones that don't make it to the cages are simply discarded in an incinerator or buried in mass graves. Ever drive past Tyson Chicken or Purdue? I have. It smells terrible. That's the smell of recently deceased chickens being set on fire mixed with tons (literally) of chicken shit with no long-term plan to take care of it other than to pile it into one place then start a new pile. Of course, Tyson and Purdue don't use their chickens for eggs. These chickens are pumped full of grain and antibiotics to make the chickens grow extremely large and fast, the growth of which is too fast for their tiny bones to catch up and causes what looks like an adult on a two-month-old body. Just think about a three-year-old kid being the size of a teenager. Do you think that kid would require medical attention, especially for all of his broken bones caused from his enormous, Mark McGwire-sized biceps? That's what those antibiotics are for! Just pump a bunch of those into his system and hope for the best. If he dies, well, then he's only in that unlucky (see also: lucky) 25% category that die before they're ready for slaughter. This is how 99(.9)% of the chickens we eat in America are raised, and that's how it saves you money making eggs a dollar a dozen and chicken nuggets on the dollar menu!

Trying to finish the meat in my freezer, Marissa cooked me a cornish game hen, a term which has no meaning when a Purdue wrapper is on the animal before cooking it. I tried to eat it but could not.

Trying to finish the bacon for the same reason, I thought of a pregnant sow, who like the egg-laying chicken is forced to be pregnant her entire life and confined to a cage that she can't even stand up in. Did you know that pigs have been proven to be as smart as dogs? Probably, but you forget about that when bacon is around. Do you think piglets are cute? And I know they're not as big as their brothers and sisters, but don't you think the runts are cute too? I'm not going to tell you what factory "farmers" do to the runts, who are obviously not given the same treatment as another pig who will undoubtedly grow larger than a runt. I don't know what's worse in this situation - ending the life of a suffering animal when it begins or after it has lived out its life (not a natural span, just a few months - enough for the animal to get fat enough) in pain and suffering in a cage with no sunlight.

So you know how on traditional "family" farms, cows and pigs and chickens shit and that in turn grows crops that they eat and so on... Well, on a factory "farm," where there is no grass for the animals to eat, and the animals are all crowded into fields, this shit ends up in big piles. These piles do more for global warming than cars. And yet, we're "trying" to change our habits on cars. Why? Because it costs us less to get more mileage.

But eating meat more consciously will not cost us less, so why should we change our habits? Well, eating meat more consciously will cost you more if you get sick from it. Remember the Avian "Bird" Flu? Guess where that came from? And the swine flu? And e-coli and '24-hour stomach bugs?'

You guessed it. Factory Farms. This is the price we're paying. Not at the store, but in hospitals and in our futures.

But you probably knew this already.

I know I knew most of this already, yet I never let myself think about it because it tasted so good. As a vegetarian band-mate of mine said as I attempted to tease him while cutting into a steak, "There's more to life than taste." I still thought he was crazy at the time, knowing that animals were harmed for the food to be in front of me, but blissfully, purposely ignorant of how it got to the table.

Do I want you to be a vegetarian too? No. Do whatever you want. I just thought I should share all this with you because I wish someone had shared it all with me. And if you find that any of the information I shared with you today isn't factual, please correct me. I didn't look any of the numbers up - I just finished that book and watching "Food, Inc." and it's pretty fresh in my mind.

So yeah, for everyone who questions my newest lifestyle choice, this is why.

Test This.

Here I am in a strange public library, waiting for the clock to advance another 45 minutes to go pick up the wife.

The way I see it, why shouldn't I go for a blog update? My last one has only resulted in 'hang-in-theres' and 'follow-your-dreams,' and since I usually don't like inspirational poster advice, I'll just do what I do best on here; complain. This time (probably the first of many) it will be about work.

I took an overly politically-correct test on my company's harassment policy and realized that the only thing I can tease someone about anymore is how they suck at video games, but at Best Buy, that person is me because everyone there eats and breathes video games. Lame. At least I can still pick on people for watching shitty movies or listening to country music. I can't even pick on someone for the way they dress, because everyone at Best Buy dresses the same!

Then, I took another test wherein I found a loophole and achieved a very high score. Here's the situation: A "customer" says a paragraph, and you have to identify the key phrases in that paragraph to pass this quiz. I didn't even read most of them; if you just roll your mouse over the paragraph, you'll notice that sometimes, more than one word is highlighted. When that happens, it's always correct, so click on it. Most of the time, all the answers were comprised of more than one word and thus the test was completely useless, much like whatever it was I was supposed to be learning at the time.

When I thought I was smart for realizing this and shared with a co-worker, I found out that he, too, did well on that test for the exact same reason. At least I didn't have to deal with customers for an hour, which brings me to my next section:

The complaint.

Someone, some lame-o customer told what he thought was my superior, that I was rude and sarcastic. Now, I don't know the whole story yet, as my actual superior didn't meet with me to formally discuss the obvious fact that I use sarcasm to relate to customers and that yes, occasionally, people have no sense of humor, but I was still following all the harassment guidelines I learned earlier that very day.

What really gets to me about this whole thing is that I don't even remember this particular customer interaction, which means I feel I was not overly-ANYTHING and this person was not rude to me. But what can they expect? I work in retail and Christmas music has been on for a month.

The thing I really don't understand is why this person sought out someone to tattle on me. Oh, and I think it's worth noting that the person sought out was not my supervisor, just a gentleman with whom I work who is older than me. He actually started a day after me! As the disgruntled customer told his tale to the 'supervisor,' he told him that he was glad to see someone who wasn't 20 years old working in the store. Last I checked, that's age-based discrimination, and I don't have to take it!

Anyway,

The moral of this story is...

I don't know.

I don't really think this is going to change how I interact with people, because unless people's smiles and eye-contact are lying, I'm doing a pretty good job.

But I should probably stop naming my company in my blog, because I'm probably violating some stupid code of conduct on a quiz I have yet to take.

A Series of Digressions

I'm stuck. Don't get me wrong, my life is very good in many ways. I am happily married and love my time at home, away from it all. But it's not my free time I'm concerned about. It's the stuff I need getting away from that's holding me back.

I have two jobs. They're both good jobs, but they're part-time and vaguely related to what I like to do, but they don't offer me any benefits or the feeling that I'm making a difference. One is in retail, selling mostly digital cameras and MP3 players. Sure, they're both products I'm familiar with, but the most interesting parts of my days there are usually unrelated to the job. When a customer comes in and we shoot the shit about the poor quality of Grade-A beef or when a coworker tells a good joke about his heritage; those are the highlights. I don't usually care about selling an extra $30 in accessories, mostly because I don't see a dime of that even though oftentimes, that's somehow my 'goal.'

At my other job as a librarian, yeah, sure, I like helping people get books. Books are great. It's just that I'm constantly reminded of the problems facing society while I explain the concepts of 'waiting lists' to another person eager to get their hands on the latest by Danielle Steel or Nicholas Sparks. Meanwhile, 'A Prayer for Owen Meany' and 'The Autobiography of Malcolm X' sit on the shelves collecting dust. I guess I have that problem at my other job too, as people seem to need help finding complete seasons of 'Two and a Half Men' or the newest release by Michael Buble, and never want Hitchcock or Tchaikovsky.

I suppose all that makes me an elitist. That's a moniker I can live with. Feel free to lump me in the same category as Barack Hussein Obama. I think I'm just as deserving of a Nobel prize as him anyway, so it all works out.

What I'm trying to say (I think) is that my jobs offer no challenge and they depress me. It depresses me to be reminded that people don't mind whatever version of 'Halloween' they go home with and have no problem spending $150 on an HDMI cable while their children stare at me open-mouthed with Kool-Aid stained smiles and a pile of DVDs that subliminally advertize more than they entertain.

So what do I do about it? Absolutely nothing. I guess I could try and ignore it, the problems specific to the American way of life. These problems that contribute to my misguided anger, depression and feeling of hopelessness. If I lived in an African village, where an extra pair of pants is considered a luxury item, would I be depressed about my neighbor who has chosen to trade for a goat instead of a cow? Probably not, but the chances of me making it to the age of 27 and in good health would not be very good. I don't think I'd make a very good hunter or forager anyway.

And now to the reason I sat down and wrote this blog... the Zombie Walk, going on in Utica tonight. It's an event that I will regretfully miss, but it's something I see every day, when more and more people wander aimlessly into stores seeking goods they cannot fully explain the reason for purchasing, and under the banner of 'helping the economy,' making the distance between the rich and the poor that much greater.

I wanted to film the Zombie Walk and edit a short piece for freelance work, now that I have my own camera and want to get my production company off the ground, but I couldn't because I finally decided to get more work using another of my tools, the tenor saxophone.

I was a music major once, but between flunking out and not being completely in love with music, I chose a different path. Now, it seems, I can't get away from it because it comes easy to me. And it has gotten in the way of what I want to do with my life. You see, I just started with this big band and then agreed to play this Salsa gig on Tuesday. Now, for that, I need to practice with the small ensemble, and we rehearse tonight, during the Zombie Walk.

I was reluctant to join this band, because I'm already spending time with my party/disco band and that gets in the way enough. I no longer find too much joy in music, aside from listening to it, and between two jobs and two bands, my free time has been slaughtered. That was the time I was supposed to spend getting used to using my camera and filming pieces to bulk up my portfolio to get me a job to get me benefits to make me happy. Right now, I use that time to sleep and stare blankly at the wide screen TV that was given to us as a wedding gift, not caring which 'Halloween' I could get my hands on.

It seems I, too, am a victim of brainwashing. The fact that I'm aware doesn't make it any better, it just depresses me more. I don't know what I want to be, but I don't want to be what I am now.

I need to blog more often. This is an okay post, but I need to be more specific. There's too much I want to say right now and as a result, my point is lost somewhere in the confusion. Oh well.

Take care. Be aware.

-Travis.

Best Buy, Worst Test

I need a job.

I need a job so badly, I'm seriously considering a career in retail. But apparently, Best Buy isn't quite as desperate for employees as I am for a job. This has nothing to do with my qualifications or experience - it has to do with my inability to pass a test.

You see, it's become common for national chains like this one to submit applicants to a long personality survey before they even look at your application. I guess since it's run by a faceless boardroom at an unknown location, a personal touch isn't really necessary if you can weed out perspective employees by asking them ridiculous questions for an extended period of time, and grade them by unknown standards.

Ask anyone who works at Best Buy, they can't tell you the answers to this 25-page survey. Not because they don't know the answers, but because they have NO IDEA how they even passed the thing in the first place. Many of them have taken it a number of times in the hopes of landing a position on the Geek Squad (a position that they probably already held by choosing to sit at a certain table at the cafeteria - they just wanted an embroidered shirt to prove it to those of us who didn't go to High School with them.)

I, myself, have failed this test three times now. I am aware of this not by any e-mail notification, but because I know an employee there. Had it not been for her, I'd still be waiting for my first answer.

The questions aren't right-and-wrong, two-plus-two-equals-five questions; they're the kind that assume a quality about yourself and give you the same four options to choose from every time.

a) Strongly Agree

b) Agree

c) Disagree

d) Strongly Disagree

I'm pretty sure there are only about five questions, worded differently for 25 fucking pages. There are about fifteen alone that can be answered by just asking 'Are you outgoing or shy?'

First, I answered honestly to the questions. Second, I answered in a way that I assumed they wanted me to answer, and third, I did a mix of the two. I am about to embark on a fourth journey into the depths of Bestbuy.com, not because I particularly want this job, but because it pisses me off to no end that I have a college degree and cannot pass a test that high school dropouts would have no problems getting through. This time I'm not reading the questions at all and answering randomly. That's gotta help.

Stocky's Guide to Life. And Maff.

Being a smaller high school, Waterville only had one upper-level math instructor. Since one of the courses he taught was a required course, pretty much everyone had to take at least one math course from Mr. Stockwell.

Affectionately known as 'Stocky' by his students, he was a great teacher and a strange, strange person. It is a fact that he licked his fingers after using the chalk board, nearly every time. Upon hearing mention of this once in class, he bit the chalk in half and may or may not have mentioned something about protein. My memory's a little foggy on that one, but I definitely remember him biting the chalk. Obsessed with sharks, he would often warn students who received low quiz scores that "the Math Shark" had gotten the best of them.

Little is known of Stocky's actual home and lineage, but students speculated anyway. Because of his alopecia, it was difficult to figure out his age. Looking at old yearbooks, it seemed the man looked exactly the same for decades. Among the rumors circulating about the man, which I highly doubt to be accurate, were that he was part shark, immortal and slept in a fold-out bed in one of the many portable storage closets in his room. In addition to sharks, he also had what appeared to be an unhealthy obsession with Texas Instruments calculators, specifically the model numbers upwards of 80, which had graphing capabilities. (Those calculators also were great for chemistry and physics classes; not for assisting but for storing memory and formulas for cheating.)

Stocky had a slight speech impediment, which had little effect on the class itself, but which explains the spelling of some of the words below. For example, instead of 'Fourth,' he would pronounce it 'Fourf.'

I really mean no offense to Mr. Sharkwell. He was a great teacher, and I learned a lot from him. I'm sure many people can agree with me on that.

Also, he had the BEST Freudian slips. We all called them 'Stockyisms,' and thanks to Jennie Swanberg for compiling a list on her Food King book cover. Her grade may have suffered for devoting so much time for paying more attention to this list then the class, but looking back, I think it was all worth it.

The terms 'fruit salad' and 'chopping' had something to do with math, but it would take Stocky's input to explain the terms any further than that. I was a big fan of the terms at the time, and they make repeated appearances in the list.

That list is now, for the first time, offered below in no particular order.

STOCKYISMS:

Don’t tell me it’s hard – it’s not.

You can’t touch anything further.

Does it make it any harder? Heck no!

I’m a sneaky son of a gun wif that.

They slam each other away.

Shh…darn!

I’m a decimal freak.

Radical 24 is doable. You can do it.

Don’t go changing signs around, that’s ugly.

If it acts like a duck, it is a duck.

I’m a decimal nut.

People get tripped up at the last second.

Some of you are gonna be cardiac sharks.

Don’t work yourself too hard.

Find me and do me.

Gotta do more of those mixed messy things.

Who just made fruit salad?

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. This is the Ugly.

I’m doing it anyway. Take that!

The more you see, the better you be.

Don’t be the limp noodle.

I don’t like chaos.

I’m cutting back on how much I do wif you.

You don’t FOIL the world, the world FOILs you.

I’ve already got 10 in the hole, I need 40 more.

Four has nofing to do wif it, it’s just hangin’ out.

The dog ate your average too.

I’ve hit about every ugly thing I can think of.

The exponent doesn’t change just because it’s smelly.

Ugly as it is, we have to figure it out.

You just have to keep the dog tied up so he won’t go anywhere.

You’re gonna get nailed.

That’s my little trick.

No one is unrecoverable. We can get you all up to snuff.

I’m very clean with my thoughts most of the time.

You can flip it, spin it, hit it…it won’t change size.

There’s no restrictions on what I can stick in there.

I’m just trying to stuff it in here!

Boy, did we kick the living poop out of this one.

Mr. Negative Number Man.

Take one result and stuff it in the next one.

How to draw them, how to play with them.

Cut the noise.

B.C. = Before Calculators.

Put the talking away.

I don’t want the Boonville Woodsman job here.

Doesn’t matter how ugly it gets.

Now all of a sudden I freak somebody out.

Twosies & twosies make foursies.

Oranges and oranges make more oranges, not grapefruits.

If you have to do it the hard way, that’s what you have to do.

File the gap fast.

The term is the basic nuts and bolts of mathematics.

You still have to do it the hard way.

People, you’re making a mountain out of a mo’ hill.

Slam it through here no problem.

I’m gonna do it the hard way now.

There are some swimming fish ninning around.

You can do it by looking at it.

I don’t know what that is, it’s a schizoid thing.

Don’t chop wood.

Don’t make fruit salad.

I like doing ugly things.

I don’t need a comedy act here, put a lid on it.

You have to work inside out, otherwise you say ‘what the heck do I do now?’

I wanna teach you to be lazy properly.

No verbal diarrhea back there.

We’re still doin’ baby guppies yet.

It’s gonna be strenuous today, I can guarantee that.

It’s sharkingly possible.

I got a few tricks to show you that you haven’t seen before.

I don’t want to clear the brackets now because I can still do some housekeeping inside.

He who fools around stays around.

Chew on your words for a while + calm down.

You’re in T.I. territory.

These problems sometimes do themselves, if you let them.

Boonville woodchopping expert.

Like terms, no fruit salad here.

Don’t do this half-chop stuff.

I’m about to be a big time bad boy.

Leave it ugly.

The Chopping Society of America could have a field day wif that one.

If you wanted to go nuts today, you could.

Hey! Don’t do it my way.

You can do FOIL in your sleep.

Cuff ‘em & stuff ‘em.

I’ll cut to the chase here.

There’s FOIL in all its glory.

Upper-level mathematics FOIL is passe.

I works like a charm every time.

Take the first one & FOIL it & you’ll go over the moon wif it.

Hang on a second, I’ll even get worse.

Show and tell here.

Bang! It’s done.

Those kinds of problems drive students crazy.

If you foil first you get yourself in a whole lot of hot water.

Monday is a day where we have to do a LOT of housekeeping.

Chopping is one of the biggest crimes in mathematics.

Don’t look to FOIL first.

I was raised in a society where we didn’t have calculators. I did everything on my feet.

As Usual, I'm Missing Something.

Yeah, so this Swine Flu thing is getting out of control. How many people have died so far? 100? That's pretty serious. But you know what's just as serious, if not more so?

THE REGULAR FLU.

According to a Public Service Announcement I just played on the radio, 36,000 people will die this year from the REGULAR FLU. Not the that crazy swine variety, but the regular, run-of-the-mill, good old-fashioned 1918 Flu that was the largest pandemic in history and killed tens of millions of people.

Why are we all concerned with this new disease? It's all over the news right now, kind of like SARS or Avian Bird Flu. Or Anthrax in the mail. Remember them? Why aren't we hearing about those any more? I just get this eerie feeling that they're only reporting on this because they're trying to avoid covering something that actually matters.

Here in Central New York, the Swine Flu Scare has even prompted Dean of Students, Ken Kelly, to send a campus-wide e-mail on the issue. In the e-mail, which I hastily deleted and now want to quote it directly and cannot, he basically says not to worry. Oneida County only has had one possible case that has not been confirmed. Kelly goes on to say that the symptoms of the Swine Flu are

-Fever (over 100 degrees Fahrenheit)
-Vomiting
-Loss of Appetite
-Diarrhea

This all sounds oddly familiar. Oh, yeah, those are the symptoms for the REGULAR FLU. Kelly's advice: If you get flu symptoms, go home and rest. Take some antibiotics or something. Don't go near people. It appears the treatment is the same as the REGULAR FLU as well. I wonder if the ratio of people that have lived to people that have died from the Swine Flue is the same as the Regular one. I wouldn't be surprised, as EVERY OTHER ASPECT is the same.

But maybe I'm missing something.

MAN.

Givin' Off the Vibe

Disclaimer: If you finish reading this and are mildly offended, you can blame Drew and Kelley for requesting an update. This is pretty much the only interesting thing that's happened to me since my last post.



Here's one of the reasons I don't go to bars any more.

So, I'm standing outside of Utica's most expensive hot-spot, Space 25 or something, I forget, and I'm just waiting for Marissa and reading the paper on my iPhone. (Sidenote, this kind of goes against everything I stand for, but the iPhone is fucking SWEET!) And this tall, I guess we'll call him attractive, exTREMEly gay black dude starts talking to me while he smokes a cigarette. His questions are probing, to put it lightly, and all the while he's loooking me up and down.

His opener - "are you in the army?" (because I was wearing an army-fatigue jacket, as per usual).
My response - "um, no. I'm into garage sales. This was a dollar."

I know what he's thinking. I don't know why I give off a gay vibe, but it happens sometimes, I guess. Does it show that I recently had a dream about Vice-President Tom Cruise asking me to shave my ass when I was pantsless at an important meeting, possibly a debriefing of some kind? I guess it does now. Maybe you, dear reader, can tell me what exactly it is about me that both repels women and attracts men.

Anyway, here's something NOT to say to a person you're not interested in, regardless of their sex.

Me - "So....what's your name?"
Him - "Kirkland."
Me - "Oh, I live in Kirkland."

I didn't think about it at the time, but I definitely should have gone with Clinton. Or Paris. Or ANYWHERE. When is it too early to tell someone you're not attracted to them? I didn't want to be rude to the guy, so I just let the uncomfortable conversation finish of its own accord.

He finally realized I was the way I was when he asked if I was here with anyone, and I excitedly proclaimed, "YES. YES, I'M HERE WITH MY FIANCEE!" He promptly said it was nice meeting me and bade me farewell.

I have nothing against those of us who happen to be gay. I think that's great, and I think Iowa and Vermont and Sweden and that other place that is doing great things human rights for homosexuals is great. I'm just not gay myself.

Would it help if I was bald again? And I don't mean my ass, Vice-President Cruise.