1. 19 November 2007

    ...

    366 days ago

    Not being able to get to sleep proves to be what it takes to get me to write here for once.

    Things I should probably mention.

    • Soccer got done a few weeks ago, in our second year we won the conference tournament. It was nice. I started all the games and played through most of them, all in all it was a good season. For the first while I played defensive mid and stopper, then one of our outside defenders broke his leg (:() and the lineup got rejiggered and I spent a few games at forward then got kicked back to outside D. I made a good joke in the locker room after one of our games: the first half wasn’t our best effort and they outshot us, we hardly got anything up in their box. The second half we did lots better and put away a few goals for the win. We were in the locker room and coach was telling us about how we did a good job of turning it around. I’d been playing forward first half, and moved back to defense after that. I’m pretty sure I lost my forward spot for cracking about how with me up top we got outshot and with me at defense we held their shots down and our more offensive-minded players scored the goals. Which is too bad, even though I don’t have any idea what I was doing at forward, I though it was pretty fun. It’s the only spot that I’ve never really played.

    It’s pretty demanding really, practice 6 days a week for about 3 months. A quick look at fidness, where I mark down all the workouts/practices that I do, shows 80+ of them in the past 4 months, 68 in the past 3, somewhere between those two is how much stuff we did during season. Lots of it.

    • I haven’t really taken any pictures at all lately. I usually like to, but for some reason I only do so when I can sort of go off somewhere with taking pictures especially in mind. I wish that I’d always keep a camera close at hand and snap things whenever I see them, but so far not the case. A week or so ago I took a camera with to my two classes, and on my way to the second class I saw a cool picture of an electrical box in a doorway, but couldn’t get pass the ‘take camera out of pocket, remove lens cap, turn on, wait 5 seconds for lens to pop out, frame up shot, click, realize that auto mode didn’t do a good job, twiddle dumb little knob and try again a few times until I get a shot I’m happy with’ threshold and so I just walked on by. Same exact thing leaving the same class, in almost the same spot there was who I assumed to bed a grandma with two little girls wondrously handling the science building’s big pet snake. I framed the picture in my head as I walked, camera bulging out of my jeans pocket, but couldn’t muster what it takes to pull it out and snap one.

    I think my problem is a mixture of the camera being a pain to pull out for one shot and put back in, and me being over-shy. It takes long enough to get out and warm up that in all likelihood by the time I was ready to snap one of these girls they’d be looking funny at me, or at least I’m afraid that they would be. Maybe the camera ‘not being good enough’ is just manifestation of my timidity to take photos of everyday life. If I go on a hike or a bike ride with taking pictures in mind I don’t have any problems, but otherwise I’m too embarrassed to pull it out and take pictures. I’m not sure that I want to look like the camera dork – as much as I do like taking pictures, the whole thing with everyone always carrying around their little digital cameras (at least to social events) and snapping plethoras of meaningless (as far as my appreciation of photography goes) shots and uploading them en-masse to facebook puts me off. Something I ought to get over, but definitely a sign that I worry more than I should about the stupid little ways I behave.

    • Speaking of which, I should figure out sociality. I really haven’t ever spent much of my energy on/around other people. I’m not sure whether it’s that I just don’t have much interest in them or they don’t have much interest in me. Look into my phone and I you’d see I haven’t made/received a call in a week. I’ve been around people and done plenty of hanging out, but mostly it’s at stuff organized by others that I’m tangential to. Soccer, watching movies with my roommates and friends (both theirs and mine), going out to eat. I don’t want to sound all whiny, but it just seems like I have a hard time connecting directly with other people. Or they with me. A general trend in all the Relationships (capital r) I’ve been in has been about one good month, then a somewhat sudden loss of contact resulting in frustration on the other side leading to her breaking up with me. I can just sit around all night never quite making the effort to pick out someone to call and call them to see what they’re up to and invite them over. I’ve never had much of an ability to do this.

    The thing is, I’m just as happy in the moment to sit around alone and read or compute or listen to music or do whatever. But then the next day I feel like I’m shutting myself out, or talking to people on monday about what they did that weekend I make motion that next weekend I’ll go do the same sort of stuff, but then (at least recently) I don’t, I just end up sitting around. I don’t know if my social skills are underdeveloped, I’m all too shy, or what. I’m definitely introverted, but I don’t know about shy. There’s definitely a moment where I reach comfort level in different social situations, before which I’m quiet, borderline silent, but fairly outgoing once I’m past that. Who knows, internet be my therapist.

    • Monk is probably due back on the air soon. I feel that my love for the show is wearing down steadily as it works through it’s seventh or eighth season, but I’m excited for it being on again. Same with the Office – shows need to learn how to end before the come sputtering to an end. Scrubs is in the same boat, great to good and I haven’t even watched any of season 7. Arrested Development is still the king of all TV shows I’m pretty sure that it’s a good thing it got dropped after 3 seasons. I’ve been watching lots of Curb Your Enthusiasm since soccer ended, at the hotel in duluth we caught an episode and I convinced the other guys to watch it and it got me to download seasons 1-3 and tear through the first 2 in maybe a week. I identify all to much with Larry David in the show.

    Maybe in writing all this I’ve bored myself enough that I’ll be able to lay down and knock out.

    • Addendum: I think it was friday night I spend like 2 hours looking through research on LSD and thinking that I’d quit drinking the alcohol. As far as drugs go I’ve never been particularly motivated, be it caffeine (had a half cup of root beer on saturday, made me sick to my stomach), alcohol, medication, illegal, or whatever. But something about LSD turns my head, I’d actually be tempted to try it if only I (a) knew where to get it and (b) didn’t have to be scared as to whether or not it was actually lysergic acid diethylamide and not just some toxic edible paper. I did in fact drink a little later that night, but in my Biological Psychology class we’ve been going through psychopharmacology and trying to think about how the brain works is really creepy.

    I have a friend messing with neural networks for his senior sem, and just thinking about how those work and mimic the stuff that goes on up in our head (as we understand it) is really funny (my head hasn’t quite figured them out). Lately whenever I have to close my eyes to try and remember something that’s doesn’t just surface I get this cool imagination of how my mind works, it’s sort of like a gyroscope with a few different concentric spherical rings sliding around different axes in concert until their intersection hits the memory and it comes back to me. I don’t know why, but I’ve felt or imagined or used it as an external model for recall of facts now on multiple occasions and it might just stick. And really bedtime. In the same class I have a test tomorrow that I haven’t really studied much for and I was meaning to go to bed at 11, wake up at 7 and get some good studying in along with a nice leisurely monday morning. Now it’s 2am.

  2. 09 June 2006

    894 days ago

    Three Weeks, Issue 1

    THREE WEEKS is a small publication, and we concede that our immediate effect will be proportional. But, whether naive or prescient, we also enjoy thinking that some small flame will be set by our actions now, and one day when our children, or their children, are despicable perversions of the ideal we represent, that flame will spread and incinerate human ignorance, petty fears, and this species’ unforgivable herd-like obsession with being fashionable.

    We shall elucidate trivia and minutiae in every branch of human knowledge, simply for the reason that it will be a revelation to the common mind. We shall frame ordinary thoughts with exquisite words, and dress the finest inspirations of human intelligence in monosyllabic dreck so that it can be grasped by the unfit. We shall soften the focus of the typical daily’s analysis, while yet seeing more sharply than the glossy monthlies of America’s doctor’s offices, or the dainty quarterlies of its coffee shops. We shall oppose prejudices and superstitions, and we shall assume a stance of provocation and skepticism.

    Kjell Olsen894 days ago

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