Currently Listening
Milestones
By Miles Davis

I am convinced that there is no better music to fold laundry to than some good jazz. It simply goes with clothes like parmesan cheese goes with spaghetti. When you really get down to it, a lot of life is about finding things that complement other things, and then using this complementarity to one's advantage.

The weather is nice and the days are starting to flow by swimmingly.

There's a spider crawling on my carpet--or maybe it's a daddy long legs, it's unnerving me.

It has crawled under my sandals. It must think itself safe. How many times have I done that? Gotten to a location where I thought everything was safe, not realizing that the sandals of my life, that shelter, could be taken from me in a moment.

I called my Dad in to see if he could tell if it was a Brown Recluse or not. It must have sensed it was in the presence of a being with over fifty six years of spider killing experience, and it began crawing toward my bed. At which point my Dad smashed it with one of my sandals. "It's dead." How unfortunate for the spider, but maybe this has conceptualized a lesson for me:

If I really want to make life enjoyable and long in duration, it's probably a good bet to not stay in one place for too long.

Currently Reading
We
By Yevgeny Zamyatin, Mirra Ginsburg

Well...it's June 23rd again, time for another one of my "day prior to my birthday posts." Last year at this time I was nervous and excited about freshman orientation and starting school. This year...I'm looking forward to the fall. I have a lot of holes that I've dug for myself, holes that must be escaped from and filled or my college career is over.

Thankfully, I know what I have to do, and it's simple enough to take the action necessary, so I plan now, on December 23rd, 2005, to make a post summarizing the successful completion of the hole filling. I have begun to learn that I can talk about stuff I want to do all I want, unfortunately, talk is cheap, and only my action towards my goals will result in any beneficial effect. It sounds simple enough, but it takes a while to diffuse through the brain.

I saw the new Batman film last week, it was a lot better than any previous Batman film, and infinitely superior to the poorly written and stiffly acted (with the exception of Ewan McGregor) Star Wars film. Episode III is the first time I can remember myself going against a Siskel and Ebert or Ebert and Roeper "two thumbs up", but I just thought the movie sucked, regardless of how it "tied everything together." I thought everyone already knew how that all happened? I don't need to see some sci-fi geeks fantasies about character fights on the screen, especially in a trilogy of films as poorly cast as this one. Sure, this movie was better than the first two, but what difference does that make? I think I wrote a short story in the third grade that would have made a better movie than the first two.

I guess when I get down to it, I don't really care for science fiction that much anymore, and the main reason I hate that movie so much is that George Lucas personally tricked me into seeing a shitty movie...three different times, so however the old saying goes, shame on me.

So, right now, I'm watching the French Connection II, and Gene Hackman's character is forced to become a smack user, while in France...trying to track down a bunch of angry frog smack peddlers, and yet...his job in that film still seems more fun than my summer job.

Yes, it's official, I hate my summer job, a whole lot. After a couple weeks of non-intensive job hunting, I got my job at the rink back. Unfortunately, things there are much worse than when I left. I didn't think it was possible, but my bosses now micromanage on a much greater level! That is, when they're not too busy taking advantage (With ridiculous scheduling and requests upon them) of my two coworkers who happen to be mentally handicapped, simply because they're incapable of telling the bosses to go fuck themselves. Hopefully, they will both take action towards their goals, which they repeatedly insist on achieving, soon as they are both 26 years old.

Any job that makes you hate humanity is not good employment. In between the snotty brats that consist of much of the public skating patronage, and the FAFSA (The Fat-Ass Figure Skater Association), I thankfully seem to have a lot of freetime that comes in handy for work on my incompletes, and for work on my screenplays. Here's an FYI for all you good people in the world, the act of skating itself...DOES NOT CONSTITUTE RIGOROUS EXCERCISE! This may come as a shock to the members of FAFSA, but they don't skate with enough intensity (See Michelle Kwan or other elite skaters/Most hockey players) to burn anymore calories than one would walking around a mall, something I'm not going to tell them, no matter how disturbing their jiggly antics get on the ice, as eventually God and heart disease solves most of the problems of mankind.

Thankfully, although I immediately fall into a pattern of absolute loathing of the rink whenever I walk inside of it, the relief upon leaving it is twice as strong. I remind myself that I do need the money, and I get along fine with my coworkers, which helps, as we all are united...by our hatred of the job and our employers. Needless to say, when I eventually get a job in Tucson during my sophomore year, I will choose carefully.

I have some events to look forward to in the rest of this summer, the Fourth of July up in Estes Park is always fun, and there is always the possibility of qualifying for a certain event that is out of the country, which definitely makes a good goal for my favorite hobby. I might also: go white water rafting again, go skydiving, visit Elitch's again, and enter another road race. So, overall, I think I have had a good summer so far, and I am looking forward to improving upon it further.

Currently Reading
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
By Alexander Solzhenitsyn

So, I finally finished a couple of books that I should have read a long time ago, Solzhenitsyn's being one of them, and I have come to the conclusion that I should be doing a lot more writing than I am, so besides finishing up work on my incompletes this summer, I am also making it my goal to completely write out one of my screenplay ideas. This is definitely reasonable for me, so, I guess I just have to get on the ball. It shouldn't be too hard, work provides ample opportunity to do nothing...nothing but write.

EDIT: On a very non-sequitured note, I can't help but wonder what my dog dreams about when he is sleeping, or what the experience of sleep is like for him, I would ask him, but for some reason, he just refuses to speak English, maybe he works on a quid pro quo, treats for consonants and vowels, system, nevertheless, I haven't deciphered it as of yet. Pavlov, help me out?