Saturday

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/columns/story?columnist=maisel_ivan&id=4710417

http://espn.go.com/blog/sec/post/_/id/6799/sec-championship-game-key-matchups

http://espn.go.com/blog/sec/post/_/id/6795/can-alabama-come-through-up-front

"I'mma run a back-hoe, uproot that tree; I wanna know where the gold at. I want the gold. Gimme the gold, I want the gold."

Web 2. ...1?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ekj75iad23s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSoJFm1vUfw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFhNiatnESw

I soak my head in the sink for a while

Warum? Plötzlich habe ich keine Lust in meinem Blog zu schreiben. Total unglaublich. Vor nur zwei oder drei Minuten habe ich gedacht, "Ich soll im Blog schreiben!" Und was ist jetzt los?? Keine Ahnung. Heute Abend ist es ein bisschen heiß. Mein rechtes Fenster ist seit ungefähr zehn Minuten geöffnet, und mein Tür geschlossen, und es ist ziemlich heiß. Ich möchte nichts trinken. Wasser? Auch sage ich, "Nein." Ich fühle mir momentan so dick! Das ist auch unglaublich. Man kann sagen, "Dass soll nicht sein." Aber hier sitze ich, mein rechts Fenster ist geöffnet, ich höre ein Jazzlied von einer Wohnung gegenüber das Mozartheim, ich trage noch ein Sprechzeug, und ich habe heute Abend zu viel gegessen, und ich fühle mir ziemlich dick. Also, was soll ich tun? Ins Bett gehen? Vielleicht. Spazieren gehen? Vielleicht nicht. Soll ich Käse essen, um heute Nacht zu träumen. An dieser Frage sage ich, "Ja, ich werde." Wirklich interessiere ich mich für Träume. Ich habe seit einer langen Zeit den Wunsch gehabt, dass ich mich meinen Träumen erinnern könnte. Na ja. Hoffentlich wird diese Käse etwas machen. In meinem Kopf oder irgendwo in meinem Körper.

Ich verstehe viel, die man in Deutsch sagt. Ich kann aber nicht so gut auf Deutsch sagen, was ich sagen möchte. Das ist naturlich das Problem.

Ich glaube, dass man wirklick ein bisschen gut Deutsch gelernt hat, wenn er den Unterschiede zwischen "das" und "dass" auf jeden Fall hören und deutlich sprecehn kann. Und das kann ich. Das ist etwas, worauf ich mich freue.

Tschau. Bis bald.

Thoughts in the Air

I thought this would be a neat starter to my trip. Nothing necessarily
cohesive. I am fairly certain I passed very near over Granddaddy's
place. The power plant caught my attention and I don't think I mistook
the Etowah River. Neato. There are two exeptionally well-behaved
children one row ahead and across the aisle from me. They are probably
more seasoned flyers (fliers?) than I am. The plane was apparently
underbooked - would that be the word? Very few passengers, so I moved
up a row from sitting next to this awful nice lady, a scuba diver, on
her way to celebrate her father's 90th birthday. I thought that was
great. Result being two seats to myself, easy take-off, and blue
skies. No sickness, no sleepiness, no real turbulence. And it's
already 1:32. For now, I resign myself to the dulcet tones of
Thriller. Well, Thriller 25.

Published from Charlotte Douglas International, 16:07 local time.

Hallucinating You

What I wish I could find the words to do would be to write about the
fledgling days of the vacation I am spending in Downtown (not Midtown)
Atlanta, in a cozy double in the Days Inn at the corner of Spring and
Baker Streets. What I wish I were doing at this moment, in some ways,
is "windin' [my] way down on Baker Street; light in my head and dead
on my feet." No doubt about it. I suppose a poignant example of
writing in this mode despite all this in my face would be the
countless flashes against the unwaivering fiberglass, the eyes too
preoccupied to take in the majesty of what I imagine must have been
real sunlight coming in around circling whale sharks and a playful
manta ray from anywhere except behind lenses and two-and-a-half to
three inch LCDs. Here I am. What I want is the balcony, the tingling
warm air, something cold every sip in a while, cars speeding past
stories underneath me, horns sounding, tires squealing, fenders
scraping. Sirens sirens sirens. Dim orange floating up, dissipating
as it bounces down concrete hallways well enough for giants. My
eyelids, so heavy. Fingers, so heavy. Every stroke like raising a
sledgehammer over my shoulder and pummeling some poor stake in the
ground. Mind racing, tailing Mine That Bird by a length and a half.
Why is there always something to say, I wonder? To think, imagine,
wonder, even? Maybe that's the very idea. The absence of an absence
makes it all happen, makes it precisely what it can be, all it can be,
makes this world this world as opposed to any other world, a world at
all. What a thought. Thought! The thought of it all. The music,
the itching, the heaviness, the sensation. The sensation. The
sensation.

"Not with a bang..."

Write About Everything

The best advice that need never have been given.  I can look back on times when, by some device, I felt free enough just to write.  To write and write and write in something I shouldn't venture to call "stream of consciousness," and really, I should say, to type, not to write, though what is that but semantics?  I write with a pen and paper, I type with a keyboard and a liquid crystal display, but I've written, no matter, haven't I?  Wind-whipped nights with nothing but gallons of ink and hot brown earth, warm summer evenings with noise all around me, drowned by the thoughts in my head.  Writing for me is such an experience, such an act, because of how intimate it is.  For those lucky of us (I must say this as there are plenty of us in this world whose sight, hearing, voice, or much worse have abandoned them, and to them I cannot relate, no matter how I try.)  Perhaps were I to go blind, a wonderful speaker would I be.  Deaf, an artist.  All in all, again, lucky am I, a novelist.  No, I have committed no long stories to any bound volumes.  I have only scarcely given birth to a character in a story, a ship on a voyage, a planet among the stars in my head.  Yet I have penned many a letter, published many a blog entry, posted, in years of yore, many an entry in my LiveJournal.  Many have been (un?)lucky enough to sift through my words; what some find littered with fluff, others find easy on the eyes and (sometimes) easier on the soul.  You are (un?)lucky enough to find yourself now in a place where there is nothing else to do but just that.

This I would like to call, "What I Enjoy"

As myriad sounds

roll into my head and back out into the ether like waves,

those sounds you can't quite place, that fade, just as waves, if you let them,

those sounds which surround the silence and

choke it to death,

I sip my tea.

Unsweetened.

A sensation, a tightness, a lightness, a spice

in the back of my throat, having downed a glass.

It reminds me that I drank tea,

that I have a throat,

that my mind is working,

that I have a mind,

that my mind is working.

When you stop and let yourself realize it

you rediscover sensation.

Carpet on the sole of your foot,

plastic underneath your finger tips,

a dull cut in your leg as the weight of your thigh rests upon the corner of a keyboard tray.

Is this pain?  Are a million, billion cells

crying out in agony?

Why won't I spare them?

I uncross my legs, and the voices are silenced.

I swallow, and the world around me is made new.

I blink, and the world around me is made new again.

When my heart beats, is the world around me made new

again?

Or am I?

It's like seeing an old friend for the first time...

A hoy-hoy, friends and passerbyers alike.

Welcome to Dinosaur Eats Man.  New and perhaps improved, from your last visit.  If you've never visited, I promise you, still new and perhaps improved.  I say "perhaps improved" because, you know, different strokes for different folks.

They just resurrected Celebrity Jeopardy for Will Ferrell's hosting of the season finale of SNL.  The best thing, no doubt, even seconds into it, that SNL has done in a long time.

I don't know why I imagined that I wouldn't stop and watch it all.  I did.  Quite the triumph.  Moving on...

I'd like to take this opportunity to show you around this little Micro Dys.. er.. Blogosphere, to get you accustomed to your surroundings, because, at least starting now (read:  hereafter), I'd like to think you'll come around fairly often.

Arriving, you were first greeted by our new mascot here at D.E.M., Grimlock.  Leader of the Dinobots, the exceptionally powerful, often loners of the Autobots.  "Me Grimlock no bozo, me king!"

Above, you'll find a section christened "Recent Tweets."  To some of you, that will be pretty self-explanatory, to others, less so.  Feel free to visit http://www.twitter.com and fill yourself in on the microblogging sensation that's sweeping the nation.  Otherwise, settle with this brief synopsis:  Twitter allows a community of individuals, spanning your average Joe to your not-so-average NBA star to your right-out-important public official, to communicate with one another and the community by and large in short messages (140 characters maximum).  Some people use it to chronicle their personal lives.  Some use it, as figureheads for companies, for some things like customer service.  Some people... well, chronicle their personal lives... from space.  Social media is crazy.  Social media is CRAZY.

Back to Earth.  (Witty, aren't I?)  I generally tweet this and that.  Let me know if there is something else you'd ever like me to trend towards, won't you?

To your left, People, a collection of other blogs, of people whose threads have at least once crossed (and likely will again cross) mine.  If you can't find anything you like here, no doubt someone's story, someone's life, someone's whatever-he-or-she-puts-into-his-or-her-blog will tickle your fancy.  I am lucky enough to know globe-travellers, family-raisers, trail-walkers, life-livers, all sorts of folk.

Below that, Places, a soon-to-be-updated collection of photos of scenes I come upon in my travels near and far.

And further still, Things, a perhaps somewhat bizarre collection of things all around the Internet.

Past, a rather standard archive of this blog.  (Short for web log, did you know that?  Probably.)

And here, where you are, the meat and two (or three.)  To some of you, that will sound familiar... a label earlier bestowed upon a failed project of mine, "Our Feature Presentation."  Pay no attention to the blog behind the curtain.  Here you'll find what I hope will keep you coming back for more.  I promise the next post won't be from the perspective of a pompous tour guide.

See you again soon.  Soon.  The caution tape is coming down, the velvet ropes scooted out of the way, the banisters polished, the candles lit, the wine poured, the phonograph cranked up, sweet sounds of Louis drifting across the ether to greet you...

Is this microblogging?

Funny, I just realized it's going to post my signature if I don't clear it. Can I?  I wonder. Apparently so. You'll notice some freshness about this place. There are still a fee cobwebs in the corners, some light bulbs to be replaced and plenty of WD-40 to be sprayed. Still, maybe your hopes will pay off this time. Maybe mine will, too.

Recently, I've been contemplating what social media by and large has done, is doing, and will do to our society. More specifically, I've been trying to figure out where I can fit in. That is to say, where I can beat serve myself, what my 21st century digital appearance can do, should do for me. Maybe that sounds hoity-toity, I don't know. If so, consider this.

If one allows, his or her Twitter feed, his or her Facebook, MySpace, Beebo, LiveJournal, Flickr, blog, YouTube channel, DeviantArt account can become much much more than portals for thoughts, for words, for sights and sounds. In so far as there is anyone you communicate with on a regular basis via the Internet, these things easily pass reflecting you, they begin to comprise you, define you, change more than just your on-line experience, they change your experience altogether, because this new media is that powerful.

Maybe you'll "stir up trouble" in God's backyard because, "What did he say?" Maybe you'll surprise a friend with knowing something seemingly personal about you and they'll say, "You read my Facebook?" Who knows?

Stick around. The gears, they are a-creakin'.

Oh, what the hell...

-Sent from my iPod-

No Sleep 'Til Charlottesville

http://alabamairc.blogspot.com/2009/03/no-sleep-til-charlottesville.html

The Concert In Central Park

You might ask yourself, "Oh, Joseph, will your fascination with Simon and Defunktel ever cease, ever dwindle?"  The answer, dear friend, hopefully not too much to your dismay is, "No, it likely won't."

I am unsure of precisely why I have found it so difficult to blog since... wow.  I didn't realize until looking specifically now, but it's been a month and three weeks.  How time does fly.  I can't tell if that's a good thing or not...

I would say "Let's play catch-up," but that's bound to happen anyway.  Instead, let's look on the horizons forwards and backwards.

• This weekend:  work, en masse, on: a take-home examination in Theory of Probability; a MATLAB-based project for Applied Differential Equations; and a lab-report on storage elements and step functions for Electric Circuits.  Not, however, a late celebration of German Karneval at 220 Reed Street, as I might have hoped, since...
• Yesterday:  a visit to the Student Health Center to be diagnosed with a supposed case of acute bronchitis.  Azithromycin for a little while.  I'd rather not subject my attempts at recovering to another late night and indulgences of a Bavarian, alcoholic nature, so I will stay in and riddle my Friday night away more peacefully.  To be quite honest, I sort of needed an excuse not to go, because it would have only led to a late-starting Saturday, and I have a hard enough time getting up Saturday mornings as things stand.
• Next Thursday:  my last meeting before the break with Drs. Houser and Thoma and my parter-in-confusion Andrew concerning our ongoing attempts in Second Life.  This is also going to be known as the "get on the damn ball, you screw-up" meeting.  Needless to say, I will be spending a lot of time logged into our ever-changing ESPRMC sim during...
• Next next week:  the break.  Spring break.  A week of breath-catching, old-(and-new?)-friend-seeing, good food, sleeping, and who knows what else.  Time spent at home, which is never to be undervalued.  Time spent contemplating just what three years old means, and how indescribable that is.  In a good way.  Also, probably a little bit of time laying out what to do with the results of...
• Back to that same next Thursday:  officer elections for the Alabama International Relations Club (AIRC).  I am excited at the prospect of being granted the responsibility of a leadership position and getting to help take the club places.  Last night I stared down nominations for a club that, over the last year, I have grown to feel very vested in.  I don't know where I would "fit best."  I do know, however, that I can flourish whereever I am given the chance to do so, so here's hoping for the best outcome.  I am also hoping that I will be lucky enough to travel with give-or-take 11 other representatives of AIRC...
• The last weekend in March:  to the University of Virginia to VICS, the Virginia International Conflict Simulation.  A favorite of past attendees.  I am excited, even just by the prospect.  I would have the chance, potentially, to serve as a mock-member of the New York Times Editorial Board, the International Criminal Tribune for Rwanda, or Carter's Cabinet during the Iran Hostage Crisis, to name a few.  I guess that will potentially be the out-and-about highlight of the semester.  Granted, I don't need to be concerned with, or searching for opportunities to travel, since...
• This July:  I'll be going to Austria.  That's right, real Western European, German-speaking, just-north-of-Italy, smack in the middle of nearly-the-other-side-of-the-world Austria.  Klagenfurt, a small town capitol of Carinthia, to be specific.  I'll be spending four weeks at the Universität Klagenfurt enrolled in intensive German language and culture study, followed by a week in and around Vienna, making my way to Budapest, Bratislava, and other roughly neighboring cities.  I could write pages worth here on Klagenfurt alone, but suffice to say, I am excited.  Hopefully...

Hopefully, it will be... great success.

In other news:

Student Government Presidential hopeful Kendra Key was defeated by a narrow margin in the most voted-in election in University history.  Our new SGA President-elect is one Steven Oliver.

What does that mean, and why am I talking about it?  Find out next time on "Tales Of Interest."

Confuddling

Such is the world.  "We live in a crazy world," she said.  I think.  I might be paraphrasing.  In the time since writing to you, I've gone and gotten another Google account and already used it tons more than the one to which this blog is attributed.  Can blogs migrate?  Maybe it doesn't need to.  I hardly ever blog nowadays.  Perhaps it is fitting to keep it tucked away in something like a storage closet.  I am sitting in the living room with a Sam's Club legal pad, folded to the second page, covered with scribles about Model United Nations conferences of yore and fore, with my laptop, with two-fifths of a five bulb lamp, no shoes, a t-shirt, a pair of blue jeans, a half-cup of cold home-brewed Pike Place Blend Starbucks Coffee, and no company save Paul Simon.  I could be Paul Simon.  I wish I were.  No I don't.  I am Paul Simon.  "Still Crazy After All These Years."  On "Negotiations and Love Songs 1971 -1986."  I can't tell if there's a lot on my mind, or only a little.  Some friends, some acquaintences.  Some responsibilites, some prospects.  Some obligations, some yearnings.   Did I say two-fifths?  I did.  You would be surprised at the difference between two-fifths and three-fifths of the five bulb lamp.  The... five bulb lamp.  How do you convey the intonation of bolding or italicizing something without doing it?  Funny how intrisic those meanings are to those typefaces.  Is that what you call those?  Typefaces?  I think so.  I am the proud owner of an Apple iPod Touch.  32 GB capacity.  My mother got it for me for Christmas.  I've told her several times over, but I'll tell her again - thank you, mom.  Of all the overpriced gadgets to be found in this day and age, I can't imagine one I would have run further into the ground having only had it for... not even a month?  That's scary.  I hope "run ... into the ground" doesn't have a negative connotation.  I mean it in a terribly good way.  Why do I keep using things with incorrect connotations?  I use it for everything.  Facebook, assignments, the weather, NPR (in both NPR and PRI form), YouTube, Google Talk, Gmail, Paul Simon, all sorts of things.  It's supplying "Slip Slidin' Away" right now.  By way of my Apple Universal Dock.  And my Durabrand 5.1 stereo.  Our Durabrand 5.1 stereo, I should say.  That needed bolding, too.  It was my Christmas present to W307.  I feel like "Myrrh."  Alen swears otherwise but I know I am.  The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac has been the other side of an instant love affair with every one who has picked it up from our table.  Thank you, Kevin.  I really like German.  I don't know if I'm any good at the language or not, but, rather inhumbly, I always feel like I sound better at it than a lot of my classmates.  Except for the girl from, well, you know, Germany.  I definitely don't feel like I sound better at it than her.

Definitely not.

Germany.  RISE, via DAAD, an "internship?" as an assistant to a researching PhD student.  I never know if the punctuation should go inside the quotation marks when I use it in an incorrect scenario such as the above.  Above?  Before.  You get the idea.  You follow me.

If you really follow me, I am surprised, but I love you for it.  I probably love you otherwise.

Germany.  RISE or Alabama In Austria.  Or neither of these.  Money.  Money money money.  Culture shock?  Schock.  Es gibt ja Angst in meinem Kopf.  Ich weiß nicht, ob ich diesen Sommer nach Deutschland oder Österreich gehen soll.  Wirklich weiß ich nicht, was ich hier in den USA machen soll.  Das geht man nicht so gut, oder?  Als ich Racquetball mit Quintus gespielen habe, habe ich auf Deutsch geflucht.  Was meint dass?  Manchmal denke und höre ich auf Deutsch.  Öfter schreibe ich auf Deutsch.  "Schreiben" nennt man, was ich jetzt tun?  Keine Idee.  Ich möchte etwas zu tun.

Oft möchte ich etwas zu tun.  Und immer gibt es viel zu tun.  Aber was mache ich?  Ich setze auf unserem großen modernen Sofa und tippe.  Liest man?  Keine Ahnung.

Vielleicht werde ich bald "Halo 3" spielen.  Warum nicht?

"Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" is playing now.  Slowly but surely, I find reasons to agree with Joseph Cundiff's assessment of this song as one of the better ever recorded in popular music.  Last post, I had it on the brain.  Shame, shame.  It's ta-nah-n-nah.  Nothing like "sha-na-na."  Shame, shame.  Maybe that's not even what I was going for.  Hopefully not.

I don't have the walking blues.  I don't think I ever do.  I'm always smiling.

Sha-na-na, sha-na-na

Diamonds on the soles of her shoes.
Diamonds on the soles of her shoes.
Diamonds on the soles of her shoes...

People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes. In a way, I imagine I do. I don't suppose I'd say I've got any walking blues. Or maybe I do. Do I taste blood? Strange. I had two cups of hot chocolate tonight. Back to back. Warmed... well, warmed, then boiled the water to keep things quiet. Quiet. In an "I don't want to wake up mom" way, not a figurative "I want to keep the fact that I'm drinking hot chocolate hush-hush way." Why would I? I wouldn't, don't worry. I've got Iron Chef America, a mug from the Wiregrass Radio Control Club Scale Fly In: Ft. Rucker Alabama, a 32 GB iPod Touch in its expensive "proprietary" dock, a Chaps polo, cold Hanes socks, aches above (below?) my radii, and heavy eyelids. I really wanted to write tonight. Write? Type. Blog.

But I can't tonight. Not tonight.

Walking blues? Diamonds on the soles of your shoes.