Oh Very Young
(16-25 February 2003)

25 February 2003
-"I've been up all night, I might sleep all day..."
-Lisha's page is helping remind me how utterly bizarre my life with food is.  She's thus far mentioned two foods (coffee & broccoli) that I would not flatly refuse to eat were I a part of her study.  I usually estimate to people these days that I flat-out won't eat 85% of the foods in the world, though obviously meat makes up a fair bit of that.  Most of it (whatever I may say about the ethics of sour cream) is not the moral issue that meat is, but a purely taste-driven issue.  But I'm starting to wonder if 85% is leaving me with too much food to eat back in that 15%.  Maybe I can only stomach 10% of all food.  I wonder if there's a master-list of food in the world that I could verify this against.  The main point is that it blows my mind out of the water that anyone under any circumstances is okay enough with food to just sign over their eating discretion to someone else.  Even a day of that would be torture for me.  Also, on subject, somehow everyone at CU-Fairfield listened to me say "vegetarian" & heard "health nut".  Whenever I eat a cookie or cake slice they offer me, they're always stunned... not all vegetarians don't like dessert!!

24 February 2003
-Just discovered that Norah Jones is Ravi Shankar's daughter.  There is no meritocracy in music or film anymore, just nepotism.  & because of all the name-changes, it looks all slick & fair.  No wonder Jakob Dylan wanted to break in without anyone knowing he was related to Bob.  To say there's no meritocracy left is a bit harsh, but I'm feeling weirded-out by all the familial connections.  What would a world be like where people didn't need pre-existing connections?  It's like we take the accident of birth, already extreme with the differences between a US/Canada quality of life & a Nigeria/Burkina Faso quality of life, then blow it up within the US as well based on who you know.  When will the right to equality get some fulfillment?
-My chest seems to be following a recognizable pattern of being better in the morning & worse at night.  Which seems to undercut its severity for me.  Anything that can be slept off a little can't be that bad in a permanent sort of way.  Right?
-Quiz Stats/SOTW updated for another week just past.  The UN trumps Thailand for the 2nd week in a row, though it still is lagging behind greatly overall.  This week, only 328 Quizzes were taken, the lowest total since the debut week of the Country Quiz.  But it's still up on enough forums that it could get revived.  Besides, 328 is still a lot of Quizzes!

23 February 2003
-My heart (area) still hurts.  Perhaps getting worse.  Still holding out from hospitals though.
-Simon & Garfunkel opening the Grammies was absolutely amazing.  A perfect version of "Sounds of Silence".  The rest of the show seemed to be a tribute to the blandest musician of all-time, Norah Jones.  I'm not saying she's bad, but she's really really bland.  Like elevator music, toned down from its craziness.

22 February 2003
-I have been experiencing a good deal of left-side only chest pain for about 4 days that gets much worse when I stretch backwards.  I don't think it's cause for alarm, but I feel pretty cruddy right now.  Ah well.
-Taking out the trash (a small part of my Saturday job description at CU-Concord) when the dumpster is locked requires creative solutions.
-I have a feeling this site is about to expand with many brand-new sections.  But that's to be fleshed out later.

21 February 2003
-Thank you to all the wonderful friends who wrote me or called me on my birthday!  I will work on response e-mails & calls soon.
-Mental clarity is starting to dawn, & I think resolution will come.  That's big picture.  That said, small picture has been vaguely bleh today.  Going out around the city (mostly Emeryville) reminded me of why I don't like going out so much.  Other people are annoying much of the time.  & they're all in a bad mood today.  What's the deal?
-Fish incoming!

20 February 2003
23
-For a while now, birthdays have been a little more on the frustration side & a little less on the celebration.  Same old song... I feel that I'm getting older, but not more accomplished or contributing more to the human experience.  Except my Country Quiz, of course.  [Insert canned chuckling here]  But at least I feel like I'm growing a bit as a person.  Twenty-three is such a big number.  & given my cryptic post last night, after a couple more consultations & some more thinking, I might actually have a decent announcement on the whole contribution to humanity thing.  But we'll see.
-The cool thing about being born in 1980 is that throughout this century, the age you turn in 1980 will be half the year plus half the year.  In other words, in 2003, 20+03=23.  It works for the whole century.  I think it's neat.

19 February 2003
-Everybody getting their Click Drive on?
-I'm drawing a blank today.  It seems that people are laying low 'round here.  Of our 26 weekly classes at CU-Fairfield, only 5 of them are on Wednesdays (7 each on Monday, Tuesday, & Thursday, making this the low day for this term).  Yeah, just not much doing.
-After a day of consideration & searching, I think I have a hard decision to make.  It's not that the decision in itself should be that hard (I think), but I need more information.  I need to figure out how much of my whole effort in this existence has to do with pride.  So much of me wants 0% of all that I do to be wrapped up in pride, but I feel myself confronting myself honestly & realizing that this may not be so.  How high is that percentage?  How much do I just want the approval of others, or do I feel I just have something to prove?  This is plaguing me, because I have an option that I know to be good that doesn't seem as good as it should.  Why?  (& why, Storey, are you being so freaking cryptic, you all now want to know...)  I guess I just need to consult with people, consult with myself, & probably realize why I'm writing in the first place.  Oh yes, it has to do with writing.  But that's all I can say today.

18 February 2003
-You seen all these drugs/terror television commercials?  Now, I'm not a fan of drugs by any means (alcohol/tobacco included), & I'm really really sick of people trying to sell them to me in this town.  However, the big problem with these commercials who paint this grand link between drugs & terrorism (conveniently leaving out the link between, say, American military funding & terrorism... not just the link I talked about before where militarism promotes terrorism, but things like the actual sale of weaponry to people now considered terrorists by the US), is one of logic.  Yes, if you buy everything these commercials say, it's a pretty good argument for not doing or buying drugs.  But it's also a slightly better argument for legalizing drugs.  Every argument they make is about the flaws with the black market... & any novice debater can tell you that you can try to beat the black market with addicts turning away from it, but practically, you have to make it a legal market to do much good.  I'm not an advocate nor an opponent of legalization... being the nut about hypocrisy that I am, I just want the legality of all drugs standardized.  Alcohol & tobacco should join the other drugs on one side of the fence or the other.  & even if they are all legal, they should never be able to be used as an excuse for doing anything... one should be culpable for all their actions, including whatever stems from choosing to do something that makes responsibility feel impossible.  Anyway, I'm getting ranty & rambly again, but I really want to see the AdCouncil commercials on "If you support the soldiers abroad, you support terrorism" & "Terrorism has killed 3,000 Americans in the last three years, while smoking has killed more than a million".
-It seems that rampant misinterpretation remains my fate, in many many contexts.  This is the Blue Pyramid, after all.
-As of early this morning, ADO is one-sixth done, in terms of chapters.  Roughly.  Hard to say how the word-count is going to correspond to that, but I've mapped out about 60 chapters (the actual result could vary from 55-70, probably) & I just finished Chapter 10.  Depressing when one realizes that I've been working on it (very sporadically) since June, but encouraging when one realizes that the last 5 chapters have all been written in the last 10 days.  Predictions, however, I cannot make.
-Man, CNN reported record snowfall in Beantown since 1892 & 'Deis closed for a day!  Why couldn't that have happened last year?!  Sure, we had 2 days off junior year, but we weren't even close to record territory.  Lucky 'Deisians... at least for a day or two.

17 February 2003
-Extremely stressful dreams, almost all revolving around obligations, & school/work type stuff.  Messing up a lot.  Most of it stemmed directly from a Thursday incident where I told someone that a cord from a Mac to a PC projector would work & it ended up not working at all, & I could've tested it but didn't.  I felt awful about this... it was just a plain old situation where I didn't properly do my job & someone's presentation suffered as a result.  No excuses, just me screwing up.  So I think my subconscious is going to bug me with that one for a while.  In the dream, there was a big meeting about whether I'd lose my job over a ridiculously similar incident, & somehow it also involved me getting booted from school, which you'll note I'm not attending.  The day the bad-school-consequences dreams go away, I'll be a happier man.
-It's the 17th, which is great, & the President's Day falling furthest from my birthday in recent memory.  Usually it's within 48 hours.  Anyway, President's Day today is reminding me a lot of Veteran's Day 1987, first because the snow in DC is roughly the same, & second because I set out today to do several errands before really putting it together that not one of them was possible because of the holiday.  If I don't get the day off, it's hard to realize that everyone else does.
-A few days back, it was the spacebar.  Now, it's the 'o' key on my keyboard.  Do you know how many standard words have 'o' somewhere in them?  It's like the James Thurber book, The Wonderful O.  This is not a productive reality when trying to move forward on my novel.  Just count the number of O's on this page alone!  I've typed almost all of them 3 times!
-The rest of the nation might take a day off on President's Day, but the BP still brings you updates to Quiz stats & the Weekly Search.  For the first time in four weeks, Thailand did not come out the most frequent result of the Country Quiz.  Also, though alisha quicksall & lauren draper amused me with what kind of match-ups they would reflect, the winning searches had nothing to do with names.  Additionally, they had nothing to do with picnic, didn't come close to a mountain, & I hate bears!
-I'm with Zimmy on the snow issue.  This is the only time of the year I'd want to be back on the east-side.  I'd love 2 feet of snow any day.
-I also should correct myself from a couple days ago... apparently "The Quiet American" is listed as a 2002 movie.  Weird.  You'd think a 2002 flick could make it to a major market like the Bay Area before Valentine's Day.  Also, what makes this film so artsy?  While it was a good movie, it didn't seem like it was any more obscure or artsy than, say, DareDevil the movie must be.  It was a pretty standard Hollywoodish drama.  So why the ultra-limited release, only playing at the artsiest theater in Berkeley months after it comes out?  Very strange.

16 February 2003
-We just picked up a beautiful rolling foam high-backed office chair for the computer area.  Good God, is it comfortable!  How did we make it so long with the wood chair piled high with awkward pillows?  I am newly motivated to sit in front of the computer for hours (be it for writing or games) just because it feels so good.  Yay!
-The dream of Ethiopian food is to become a reality tonight.  Neither Em nor I have had this food (I know the joke you're thinking of... Ethiopian food?...) outside of the Bay Area... she last had it about six years ago, & I roughly seven when in the region for the newspaper trip.  I actually didn't even have it... it was in the midst of a 28-hour no-food streak that was really odd in that trip, & broken by about seven tacos from Taco Bell.  But I digress into random past events & am about to be late for dinner!

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