Drop a penny on the ground, pick it up yesterday.

“Penny lane is in my ears and in my eyes…”

Some classes are slept through, some are late for, some are startlingly walked out of because forget this, some classes are wingmanned for hungry 4-dimensional reptiles.

Some like to sit in the first 3 rows, some in the back 3 rows, some in aisle seats, with independent preferences well and good. Yet the confluence of individual opinions can affect the tardy, who can’t take a seat in the back, who can’t duck into the front, who can’t slip down a row, who can’t even climb over to reach the empty seats in the middle.

Lurking into law.

As tempting as giving Calypso a mouse with a broken right-button as a toy would be, as even she should realize that a mouse totally looks like a mouse, having her associate cords as the tails she instinctively wants to claw will be regretful.

I have a problem with not dealing with my problems.

“I have a very deep relationship with cashmere.”
Isn't it actually a shallow relationship? Purely physical.

The attraction in reading horoscopes is retrospective rather than predictive, so that insight might be found in analyzing what has just occurred, not in trying to divine what may yet. As such, their inclusion in Cosmopolitan is appropriate.

Possible results of cleaning a room
1) You straighten
2) You throw things out
3) It looks messier

What about, ‘It gets clean’?
No.
<simultaneously> No.

“Late at night I toss and turn and dream of what I need…”

A role-model, being not superlative, minimizes suboptimal action in a given context which heroism would transcend. A hero is without flaw in action, unable to be emulated. Both depend on deed; uncertainty and indecision counter the type of directed prominence to which a young child might hope to aspire.

“…Holding out for a hero…”

There’s a narrow window between recognizing the status symbol and realizing it’s just a status symbol.

Reasons to not save the best for last
1) The milk will make it soggy.
2) Mom will come along and take it.

Read the Time Traveler’s Wife, which more cohesively explores the same theme of the independence of time and love (albeit at the expense of freewill) as Benjamin Button, by illustrating the duality of the observer and the observed. Penelope, now titular, becomes equally important as Odysseus.

7 years ago I went on a journey.
6 years ago I went on a journey and I found myself.
5 years ago I went on a journey and I found my past.
4 years ago I went on a journey and I found my present
3 years ago I went on a journey and I found my companions.
2 years ago I went on a journey and I found my limits.
1 year ago I went on a journey and I found my future.
This year I will go on a journey and arrive.

And I resolve to tell what I will have found.

Saw The Spirit. Other than the style echoing Sin City, this film treats all of its elements without any seriousness. Unfortunate, as I could use a moral about empathy for a location over people, rather than satirization of the concept.

Does one have less uncountable things or fewer uncountable things?

Fewer, but none of them will understand this.

I never realized how hard it was to get out of this house.
I know. I remembered why I got my learner’s permit.
No, I mean, through the doors.

5 people need to be 5 different places, none of them here.

Can we just take 5 seconds to appreciate how awful that was.

Oil running out.

You’re not supposed to pour hot oil down the drain.
Really? That’s what L[] always said, but she would open the microwave door without stopping it first.
Oh, then what does she know?

Darkness into heat, wood into fire, time into space.

I was this close to impulse buying a space heater.

Saw Benjamin Button. The non-symmetry of the second half, which does not reflct the pacing of the first half, does disrupt the theme, but nevertheless the film does adequately explore the independencies of the time and relationship axes. Interestingly, the unprecedented symbolic use of Katrina, representing the destructive storm underlying time, feels much more raw than the senseless WW1 casualties it parallels.

Read the Raw Shark Texts: parts Myst, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Matrix, Name of the Rose, Jaws. Aside from being fascinating, it personally raises so many questions answers are already know to.

Why a book is unread so long.
Why panic at archive crash.
Why must tell the story.
Why happened at 16.
Why not over her.
Why not swim.
Why a cat.
Why lie.
Why.

The chance of rain and the necessity of doing laundry are directly related.

A most ghetto Chanukkah.

The secret to surviving excursions on numbingly cold days is Teavana.

I hate driving tests. Why isn’t life like baseball? If you get thrown enough bad pitches, you get to go to first anyway.
Um, driving tests are like baseball: if you fail enough, you get to walk.

Try to go again.

Another hiatus, another SI single.

“I am understand with occasional difficulty.”

In the future, some poor student translating will, being confused by the term air conditioning, try to translate it literally, only to be rebuked by their teacher for missing the note on the text explaining that the phrase idiomatically denotes cooling.

“I find it kind of funny / I find it kind of sad…”
I leave bed one transcendent sleepless night…
“…Worn out places, worn out faces…”
Cut off from the world…
“…Going nowhere…”
Having read a book…
“…No expression…”
A book not yet published…
“…No tomorrow…”
A testament I pray must be of a friend of a friend…
“…Happy Birthday…”
A story about my life…
“…Sit and listen…”
My story, never told…
“…No one knew me…”
My life, never lived…
“…Look right through me…”
Mad.
“…I find it hard to tell you / I find it hard to take…”

“Like a virgin / Touched for the very first time…”

One can only reveal to someone that one is not a virgin once.

“11) Sex is a good way to cement a place in a relationship and make it serious.”
Agree. But, I mean, I’d also agree that it’s a bad way to cement a place in a relationship and make it serious.

A pocket full of lie: Counting out money, setting a dainty dish before the king, the queen’s honey, and roguish overanalysis.

“Sing a song of sixpence…”

Matter is a male mattress.

Nothing to sneeze at.

“Oh yeah / I’ll tell you something / I think you’ll understand…”

Dialogue: Hand, to mouth

I didn't want my reaction to your being honest to be negative, be it critical or fearful or guilt. I wanted some level of: okay, we can do this.

Share: Hand, in hand

That's what I value in physicality. The expression of being wanted, acceptance of wanting, that just doesn't work without awareness or sensitivity.

Comfort: Hand, shake

“…I want to hold your hand…”

Did the apple feel any guilt for the original sin?

Is there goodness in humanity sufficient to not make destructive mistakes? Is there goodness in humanity sufficient to recover from mistakes having been made?

I have made destructive and self-destructive choices to people close to me, despite it not being my intent. And even if wanted and deserved, I can’t in venting my misanthropic rage selfishly prioritze my own emotional want. If I am satisfied by my own behavior, then the rest of the world's is immaterial.

That's what I feel guilt about. He, to not hurt a friend, refrained from you. That same night, I didn't, despite knowing that a friend didn't want me to, the friend being you.

- $
- programs
+ curtain
+ box I'd/monoxide
- singing
+ taking S[]’s suggestion
- changing Canadian parliament to Canada
+ funny
- confusing
+ leap onto the table
- not listening
+ prop DVD/ invisible DVD player
++ Auschwitz
+ B[] not laughing on the backline during M[]’s monologue.
+ shirtless
- rejecting a suggestion
- explaning a joke
- shortform
+ recovering neatly
+ funny
- singing
+ good lines
+ extra game since extra time
- A[]
+ spaghetti arms
+ pizza

(?) is the ultimate in self-doubt, to be unsure whether one is unsure.

Different couch, different shirt, different night, same game.
This will only end badly.

Oh god she’s beautiful. Oh god she’s beautiful. Oh god what is she doing with her leg,

Siberian exile
Spreading the party line
Being a loyalist
Looking the other way
Violent nepotism

Libations of camaraderie, comrades liberated.

It’s red and evil and makes a humorous topical political statement.

Let’s give communism a try, even if it involves giving the shirt off my back.

“Shout, shout, let it all out…”

The summer after my sophomore year I was subletting an apartment on Wash. Ave., and one day I had a fight with my then-best friend and was playing music loudly. The person upstairs came down at the noise, and I felt bad for disturbing her, so I told her that I was just having a bad day, and I'd be quieter. She came back later that evening and left me some extra brownies she had.

Yell as loud as you need.

“‘He was shifty. And, I mean, he was pretending to be shifty- but then he also seemed shifty underneath that.’”

Unsuspending disbelief like a bad horror film

Why is someone listening to me give date advice? Why am I giving good date advice? I sound like I know what I'm talking about: ‘Find something you want to do and do it with her.’

Crashing like the snow.

“Are you having an existential crisis because you gave someone good advice?”
Thanks, that’s a really good way of putting it.

Crazy like a loon.

That quote, even in the context of my life right now, did not seem to make sense.

Shouldn’t should.

“We will meet accidentally / We'll start to talk…”

Run into someone you haven’t seen for years
Get stood up
Sit down
Watch
Office
Drop by work
Go to a store
Go shopping
Buy a DVD
Return a DVD
Buy a book
Do something nice for someone
Get the mess out of your hair
Take a trip
Tell me about your day

Twice over
Cake

“…With a short skirt / And a long jacket…”

“You think you lost your love…”

[jeI] : [jiæ] :: excitement : agreement

“…Yeah, yeah, yeah…”

Subconscious haunt should've
Risen above
Shame proclaiming in name of love
Not her I'm thinking of.

Given infinite time, anything is possible to create; for creation is the act of assembling components, and components are finite. Memory is thus an act of creation; for to remember is to recall existing components. Things forgotten are not permenantly lost, but merely await the rediscovery of their order, confirmed by recognition. But even were time not unlimited, the mind is not perfect. Recognition fades.

I am fortunate for the memories that I have archived, scrawled, typed, in basement storage. Part of me feels that I can never die until the archive is complete. The other part of me feels that completion is only necessary so long as I am alive.

Shoplifting is an extreme activity. Either it is done to the expensive because the cost is too significant, or to the cheap because the cost is insignificant.

Rickrolling jumps the shark on the Macy's Day parade.

Fun will be taken away capriciously. Personal preferences require justification. Sharing is bad. I learned from an early age the penalty of judgmentalism; at a late age that empathy is an acquired skill. The ability to understand how another feels is a closely guarded secret, from which comes the necessity of deceit. For lies are born from both the repeated rationalizations and from the omissions that become learned as necessary.

Memories are composed of thoughts and of sensations. Actual events are replaced by the lessons of what will be done differently next time. I remember how I felt, what I thought. That is what happened.

Can give recompense in food, money, and/or truth.

Quantum of Solace, more a continuation than a sequel, requires comparison to a predecessor. Rather than worry about the dichotomy, it chooses to overwhelming follow the patterns set by Casino Royale. The world it takes place in features morality is reflected by the lack of perfect rejoinders and smooth characters, and poise. The evolution of identity was worth ducking out of work early to see.

“When the other person not only makes you feel insecure but actually seems to want to destroy you, it's obviously the end. The Quantum of Solace stands at zero. You've got to get away to save yourself."

First rule about being a guy: don’t neglect the needs of the girl you’re in bed with.

Always have an exit strategy: flee the state, call in a favor, give a fake name, coopt the innocent. Lay and lie: put things in place.

You seriously believed me? Wow. You believed the we’re-friends-again part too, didn’t you.

Friends will be there when you’re not; invite you to their party; leave their own party to pick you up when stranded; loan you 2 boxers for a brief visit; shake your hand and pull you out; thank you with a kiss, a pineapple, and here’s my phone number; and don’t say hurtful things to each other.

“Say what you need to say…”

It’s miserable to realize that if the past 2 hours had been spent doing laundry instead of at the career center, at least some of my life would have gotten in order. It’s depressing to then spend the next 2 hours failing at the laundry.

Disrobe, lie bare, and let the naked truth be exposed in the bitter cold of the impending winter.

The ditch by the side of the road called. It wants to know where I was last night.

Midnight bacon works most times, but some nights require 10:30 calamari.

Did you already have an American Beauty one started?
No, I’m doing one about squid.
Did you already have a squid one started?

I like whimsy and creativity.
I like nostalgia. So I can be, ‘Hey, it's rabite but pink! Aw, I remember rabite.’.
Yeah, I'm like, ‘Seriously? Killer purple fluffy mushroom? Yeah, you barely eked by with that one the first time around, Squaresoft.’.
It would be neat if real life were like that. Like there's a blonde you somewhere out there, and later on, a pink-haired one.

The Pure Land is the last beautiful place you go to; a lingering beauty in a sea of ugly, where one cannot go back to.

Pyramid, already a clever game, is elegant because the Winner’s Circle round is not merely an exciting bonus round, but a built-up tapering of the prior round. In the earlier round, clues must be given for things in a category to be guessed. In the later round, things must be given for a category to be guessed.

There are 2 types of gameshows: Those I know from GSN, and those I admit to watching.

Sound on, sound off.

I hate November

Everyone is judgmental and lies about it really well.

If someone tells you that honesty is the best policy, they're lying.

Good riddance to hypocrisy.

“Why did you just buy a pint of milk?”
I’m going to a pumpkin party. <pulls out box of pumpkin spice pudding>
“<gapes> Oh.”
You really should know better than to ask me that kind of question.

The proof is in.

Why did we ever even bother with jello.

“Wait, are you asking me to be an antiwingman?”

Even insanity needs a getaway driver.

“…That's the reason you're here, mighty wingman / You're taking one for the team…”

Lack of control is the stamp of nightmare, be it creator unable to control creation or individual at the mercy of an inevitable higher power.

Veterans.

1) Overcharging students
2) Putting subliminal messages in endcap signs
3) That obnoxious buyback woman who sighs, and whines about everything, and demands to speak to someone about how outrageous it is that we aren't giving her more money, and just has a thoroughly unpleasant attitude- every single semester
4) The poltergeist in the Architecture section that always messes up the books there no matter how often you straighten
5) Destroying books and magazines in front of customers
6) ActiveDirectory
7) Finding invoices
8) Plotting to annex GM, enslave their workers, pillage their merchandise
9) Nibbling on candy, then putting it back so no one notices
10) Slack-off-Sundays
11) Getting M[] in trouble

Passa recaptiva.
“Crazy” (in love), which is
Girlstruck repeating the
Same hope, becomes

Synonymetric’ly
“Insanity”, which is
Somehow expecting some
Diff’rent outcomes.

Get off, unwrought romance
That won’t advance
Past passed reflection, nor’ll entrance
By chance of second chance.

So Rent is 3 Musketeers?
But the question is, what’s the Snickers?
Fight Club?
No, Fight Club’s the Milky Way. Snickers is Candy.

Candy is not even mostly a drug. It’s a relationship, albeit just as addictive.

Heaven is being together and happy.
Earth is being together and miserable.
Hell is being apart because you’ve realized that you can’t be happy together.

I can’t take vitamins seriously.

Closer to home: going in circles but seeing straight.

“We've been waiting all our lives / For things we've always had…”

I woke up this morning someplace new. The sun was shining. I reached for my glasses. The right side was broken; it had broken sometime last night.

“…But have no eyes to see…”

A beautiful woman appeared before me, telling me how I got here and what had happened; and apologizing for how she couldn’t stay and how she had things she needed to go do now.

“…Something new is going to happen / The most natural thing / But nothing we'd expect…”

There was a note above me:
“Obama is President.
(Feel free to sleep here)”

“…All these buildings and mountains…”

[Feed the starving pollworkers! Anyone willing to bring food to Glenridge Elementary can earn serious awesome points.]

No one even has a pro-McCain argument any more. The best they can do is anti-Obama.

The tragedy of this campaign is how greatest strengths are greatest weaknesses.
The salvation of this election is how greatest weaknesses are greatest strengths.

“Yes we can…”

Rachel Getting Married is a paean to Stoicism.

I called non-emergency police about kid, gave Calypso fresh water/food/litter, sent an e-mail that A[] will think I'm crazy for, and am getting breakfast with you in the morning. I think that's a good a place as any to call it a night.

It’s been a long night.
It’s going to be a long November.

Of Thee I Sing: 148 lamb chops, a bridge joke, and the best darned corn muffins you ever ate. Really, that’s all I need.

I’m a Stoic/I’m not a Stoic
Didn’t find what I needed/Got what I wanted
Carried away should be/Never get carried away should be

Pirates vs. Caesar, the Republic in the balance. Go over a bridge, through a wall, from fire to ice, turn neither left nor right, out the passenger door in the left turn lane, say hello, say goodbye, explain tomorrow, live for the chaos wherever/wear-ever/we’re ever chance might take.

“And the highwayman came riding, riding, riding…”

The annoying thing about translating Greek poetry is that it has too many nouns whose nuance is struggled to be found until the professor reveals that, actually, it’s a name, so that you hate that person for having a stupid name, but with them already being so dead that you're translating their funerary epigraph, what can you do.

The dreams of happiness? The dreams of sweet?
The dreams of some creature named Felix.

You have a Voice. I like that.
Easiest assignment ever- took zero time. Woke up, printed xanga entry, handed in.
It's weird just how much of English class is teachers trying to drum voice out of you. Then you get to the real world and discover that the trick is to find yourself.

1st: italics
2nd: bold
3rd: quoted

My voice doesn’t say whom.

Anti-Turing Test
Whether a computer can correctly determine whether a message has been automatically generated by a computer or composed by a human.

You are a great writer, even if google does think you're a robot.

The problem with shopping at Target is that they have many of what one wants but little of what one is looking for.

Ob’ession

I am very good at writing very bad poetry.

Blue daffodils of silence in a field of crimson drear’,
Virgil, attest to
Nothing
And turn to mine lonely voided plate, 'pon which lay
A thought
Of
The salmon roll, with ricelets hung dropped from seaweed sheath
Askew in throat, wherein the missing plaint,
“O Featherbottom! Hamilton! Virgil! Four!”
Ricochet back down my trachea-“Sir Piddlesworth Uppington Smythe, please pass the wasabi.”

Facebook RSVPing is a protocol dependent on interpersonal relationships as much as on projected attendance.

Breakfast: cereal
Lunch: bagel, yogurt
Dinner: eggs, toast, fruit
Midnight: bacon

“Can never have too much bacon.”

“Millennium…”

It’s amazing how little and how much of the world can change from one glimpse to the next.
(The best I’ve found is Paris Hilton.)

“…We all enjoy the madness ‘cause we know we're gonna fade away…”

She has mastered the fine art of jumping into boxes she cannot jump out of.

Unemerging.

Jump is an overstatement. More like, climb onto the chair next to, and fall down from. It’s adorably awkward in a what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you kind of way.

Searching for meaning in an Oliver Stone movie about George W. Bush should only be done for the sake of rampant overanalysis. The film has a focus-losing hodgepodge that it more amusing for the real-life moments it recalls than for what is actually presented on screen. The film seems to lack any other artistic or thematic purpose until perhaps the final scene, revealing that George W. Bush isn’t a tragic figure at all. For, while the film does explore the myriad of options, he lacks a tragic flaw; thus, it’s instead a farce.

Everyone needs to do something crazyspontaneous over Fall Break at least once.
Everyone needs to sleep through their flight departure at least once.

I’m going to be horizontal now.

There is no problem with delving into illogic and abandoning whatever point was actually supposed to be argued, if there is the opportunity to establish something tangential more aesthetic, be it an admission of the acceptability of lying, or simply an ironic statement regarding the divine.

When the urge to *run* without regard to destination is felt, there are 3 kinds of places to flee to:
1) To a generic location.
2) To a foreign culture.
3) As far away as possible.

Essentially: Columbus, Madrid, New Zealand.

[This list could include the base case: 0) Out of sight, which corresponds to Inside.]

Presidential debate could use a little less accusative and a little more ablative.

Cats operate on a logic, their own.

How geos?
I'm writing an autobiography. I started yesterday.
Oh?! That's awesome. Don't forget the part where mom and dad adopted you from a moose farm.
I'm old enough to finally know?
I guess so, yes.
How geos with you?
I'm applying to culinary school.
Don't forget the part where mom and dad taught you how to grill moose.
Oh, they told you that was moose? It was your second brother. They didn't like him much.
He needed more salt.
I agree. Maybe some curry?

Thai together.

“What’s the difference between green curry and red curry?”
“You could ask the waitress.”
That’s one option. Or, you could go out, get an iPhone, and look it up online.

Contemplating days, dates, and the difference between.

I’m too old for this.

Tears pour out: torn until
The heart lies still
I grieve, for by your leave I will
Know what it’s like to kill.

The wonder of the Internet’s time-wasting potential is encapsulated in an Office throwaway joke about a youtube video involving Cookie Monster singing Chocolate Rain.

When humanity fails, at least we'll have theoretical physics.
“Some have skipped humanity entirely to move straight to theoretical physics.”

If you’re going to die in the upcoming year, you probably shouldn’t starve your immune system for a day.

Server service.

It is a good day when you can get free food, broker free food, and receive free food in commission. Especially when it involves pepperoni, lamb, and $2 bills.

What’s surprising isn’t that a vomit party is needed, it’s how many people need it.

Flash of Genius switches between 3 different genres, almost abruptly: documentary, psychological drama, and legal thriller. The ending is depressing in how it doesn’t deviate from what one would ordinarily expect, but it does reinforce the everyman quality of its hero/the prototypical inventor. The film is not without irony, that the subject’s popular recognition will come not only posthumously, but without his control.

“These foolish games…”

Logic, puzzles, overanalysis, indecision.

“…You were always crazy like that…”

Ruing, my new reply
Will be that I
Plead: I need you to explain why
We cannot again try.

“It's all been done before…”

This election needed to be between past and future, not between political parties. Unfortunately, both futures won their primaries; post-convention, the conflict is dominated by the past. Whoever wins will owe their victory to what they should have been fighting against.

There needs to be debate, but instead rich DC middleaged/oldfolk sit around a table after the feast, in candlelit darkness with the power out, arguing about what went wrong. There is the tragedy of our era. It’s not that things are changing; it’s that things have, and none of who need to realize do.

I’ve already recovered my key. All I can do is watch nostalgically as a 1-term inexperienced governor and a loquacious senator come to town.

[profile temporarily utilized for space]
“…I met a girl who sang the blues / And I asked her for some happy news / But she just smiled and turned away…”

I chose between true and love, and not only was it not my choice, not only didn’t I make it, but I chose wrong. I erred more than can be explained, and probably more than I can ever hope to be forgiven for. The realization of the flaws behind the tragedy doesn’t help the character who still feels the pain of having taken something alive and felt the life squeezed away.

“…I went down to the sacred store / Where I’d heard the music years before / But the man there said the music wouldn’t play…”

I have never been ambitious, content to merely do as I do and let things proceed as they proceed. Stoicism may be a trap, but it is a pleasant one; for there I had everything I ever wanted: lost, found, and regained- everything save time. And does one say to the victorious de Leon, but now what?

“…But not a word was spoken…”

Goodbye, truth: you are a glorious incarnation, but I am not yours, and weren’t ever. I tell people I’m a pathological liar. They still don’t believe me.

“…The three men I admire most…”

I am 3 people: who I was, who I became, and who I will be.

“…Bye-bye, Miss American Pie... ”