Month: October 2006

So I’m going to write a new novel. I noticed that Jscrilla was a NaNoWriMo participant. I’d considered doing it in the past but usually didn’t hear about it until November had already begun. I usually didn’t have any time to spare for such an ambitious project. I thought I would be able to complete Never Enough for the project, but apparently that’s against the rules. Instead I’ll write Smudge.

More will be revealed…

Standing 15 pages tall and weighing in at 6,518 words, I give you the much anticipated Never Enough, chapter one. It’s been completely revised (even the section that was previously posted as “final edit”). More chapters will follow as I string together spare hours from weekend to weekend to continue the slow, not-so-steady progress. But I feel good about it. I might just have a novel finished by the time I’m thirty.

In other news, I’ve also busted open a sarcophagus to try to breathe some fresh life into the memoirs that I started in the Fall of 2004 (they look a little something like this). We’ll see how that project works out, too. Maybe I can aim for finishing that by the time I’m thirty-five, so I can float it out on the wave of my popularity as a novelist 🙂

nothing like ending the weekend with a little wishful thinking!

I’ve migrated my photos…I’m using google‘s picasa now, mainly because I couldn’t get the slide show function on frontpage to work properly. It’s probably part of google’s conspiracy to be smarter than god.

Joining the military seems like it could be a bit extreme…there would definitely be some benefits, but I’m having a hard time imagining that they’d outweigh the risks involved. But perhaps when there’s a shortage of suitable alternatives, the risks become more worthwhile. I actually considered it briefly, myself, after I’d dropped out of Bradley but before I’d gone back to school. My hiatus lasted only one year, but it seemed like a long, long year, and I felt rather desperate from time to time. I’m sure that a person could learn lots of very useful things in the military, both practical tools that could be taken into a career, and character stuff that could be used in personal development. I might just be an easier, softer way kind of guy 🙂

on a side-note, I just want to point out that I resent the idea a little bit that “serving one’s country” is synonymous with “joining the military,” as if that’s the only way someone could serve his or her country. I will readily agree that the people who serve in the military play an integral role in carrying out the work of our government, I think that people should be aware that folks who speak up, raise awareness, and educate are doing another very crucial public service, without compensation from our federal reserves (or, in the case of our schools’ teachers, with minimal support from our tax dollars). It might be possible that strapping on a gun could potentially be a patriotic action, but that does not mean that there aren’t other ways to enhance the quality of life in our country.

And my final bit of wisdom on the matter: considering that people all throughout the world want the same thing—to experience joy and avoid suffering—the whole “country” designation seems rather artificial. We’re all just people trying to take care of ourselves and our loved ones. It seems like going abroad with first aid kits and boxed lunches would do a lot more good for our nation’s security than going abroad with guns. Nations with healthy, well-fed citizens tend to produce a lot fewer terrorists. Here in the US we eat so much that we tip the scales, and still we throw out more food per capita than some nations consume. They don’t hate us because some of us love Jesus, and they don’t hate us ’cause some of us (the ill-equipped ones) drive Hummers. They hate us ’cause we killed their parents to take their oil to sell to ourselves so we could be rich enough to drive Hummers and eat three-quarters of a super-sized order of french fries and toss the rest in the street.

Okay. That was just in case any of you forgot how much I hate freedom.

This.

(thanks James)

“The beauty of YouTube is that it takes entertainment out of the hands of morons in suits and puts it into the hands of morons in sweats.”

I went and did some yoga yesterday. It was very interesting. I’ll be going back.

This.

(thanks again, Conor)

What art should be like.

(thanks Conor)

I headed up to Northern California for the weekend. Jscrilla and yoda were in the Silicon Valley for some business, and they changed their flight from Friday to Saturday so we could hang out. Well I was broke as hell as of Thursday night and almost called the trip off, but they said if I could get up there they’d feed me and gas me up (those who know me know that feeding me is gassing me up), and a friend here was kind enough to loan me enough gas money to get up there. We went to the Golden Gate Bridge and sang the theme from Full House before heading down to Muir Woods to check out the trees and end up on the long trail that amounted to a 4-mile or so hike. Finally we ate dinner at the fisherman’s wharf before heading back to crash out for the night.

My brother had called to let me know that he had the flu, so he might not be able to hang out, and I might not want to go into his apartment for fear of getting contaminated, so after those guys got on the plane Saturday morning, I decided I’d just see if my brother’s wife and kids wanted to visit briefly before I got on the road. They all ended up coming out, including my brother, and I was able to take the two older boys out to the Children’s Museum to play around for a couple hours. It was lots of fun, and I’d have more pictures but I blew my battery on all the scenic pictures taken from the moving vehicle. They might be able to come down here to visit sometime, though, and then we’ll get some pictures at the zoo or something. For now, here are just a few pictures of the boys on our visit.