Appreciating the Brent

Without getting too personal or too mushy, I figure the best way to spend this Houston-bound afternoon flight is to reflect on the very reason I’m making this trip: My brother.


This year for my birthday, my brother sent me the following items.

1. 5 lbs of Haribos (gummy bears).
2. Moleskine notebook.
3. DVD copy of The Room.
4. Pair of silvered aviator sunglasses.
5. Texas flag.
6. Gundam Heavyarms scale model, direct from Japan.

I’m not sure whether this list says more about my brother’s creativity or my completely eclectic, crazy personality. Together, they’re the best birthday package I’ve received in a long, long time.

Look. Apparently, siblings can be a complicated thing. I have sweet, innocuous, reasonable friends who constantly battle with their blood relatives. Some of these otherwise reasonable friends of mine won’t even speak to their respective brothers and sisters. More commonly, though, there’s some rift—a lack of common ground or an age difference or an insurmountable distance—that keeps them from enjoying what might otherwise be a very rewarding relationship with the closest thing to a clone that nature and nurture have to offer.

With that in mind, I’m practically the luckiest guy in the world when it comes to siblings. I only have one. We’re separated by an age difference of two years. We see each other at least twice a year. And by some divine providence, we have the same warped, meme-tastic sense of humor, which is something I demand from each and every person I chose to bring into my closest inner circle.

We love YouTube Poop, /b/ memes, the weirdest shit that Adult Swim has to offer, Bret Easton Ellis, cheesy videos by Paul Wall, the collective nothingness of Charles Bukowski, jaded liberalism, trolling our friends, TV shows that haven’t aired since 1998, professional wrestling and, above all, our mother.

Aww.

Now, it would be unfair to keep going without first mentioning that we do have our differences, too. These are things we have learned to set aside in light of everything we have in common. He drinks beer and I chug it, but we both can sit down to a beer and laugh about the latest stupid thing we read on the Internet. That’s what being brothers is all about, I think. I’m hardly the expert on people.

I’m lucky to have a brother like Brent. I’m also incredibly proud that he’s been able to excel at everything he’s put his mind toward: His degree in literature, his relationship with Dina, his out-of-college job, and just about everything but keeping his room clean. Heheh, lol.

So congratulations on making it this far. I'll see you in three weeks.

Bad Things Come

So how are good people supposed to feel when terrible people die?

In the aftermath of Monday’s late-night announcement that Osama Bin Laden was killed in a spectacular firefight, I’ve seen all sides of the argument. My Facebook news feed has been a mishmash of rabble, apathy, opportunistic joking, disgust and celebration. Some of my friends have already penned eloquent responses to the news. Others drop precision-guided cynicism bombs loaded with the potent fact that Bin Laden’s death will not stop America’s continuing military endeavors in the Middle East.

And then you have the sanctimonious humanists. These are your far-left political cartoonist types who only see the world in shades of “do not kill.” My Twitter feed and (to a lesser extent) my Facebook feed were both hit with a deluge of messages reminding me that killing is wrong, no one deserves to die, and that even Osama Bin Laden has a family. Well, they’re less reminding me of those things and more reminding me how bbbbad I am for cracking a smile at the news. Moral posturing might be another name for it.

I miss having a prepackaged moral compass because it makes dealing with these sorts of situations a whole lot easier. Back when I had a head full of Vonnegut, I’d be up on that hill pointing and huffing at anyone who posted this song last night. And on the other side, there was once a time in my life when I’d have been downright ecstatic to hear that Osama had taken one between the eyes. Either way though, I would sleep soundly knowing my position was right.

My experiences throughout the past five years have taught me that the world is a highly complicated place where no canned response is a truly fair response to news of this magnitude.

• Cynicism is an insult to the well-meaning individuals who have died in the past ten years trying to bring an awful man and mass murderer to justice.
• Blind enthusiasm over Bin Laden’s death does nothing to improve the human condition. Obviously, this world isn't going to get better with more death and destruction.
• Pacifistic piety is selfish and, though sometimes well-intentioned is also ignorant to the complexities of a world where crazy people who hear voices are trying to kill innocent families for no reason other than to prove a point.

The only thing I really knew in the wake of the news was that I was unsure about my own feelings. This made me feel unprincipled. Big news tends to do that lately. I can’t jump into a respectful argument and see it through to the end without stopping to second-guess myself or concede to the other guy. But I decided to take this opportunity to really sit down and trace out my feelings, point by point, until I’d actually made a position on this issue.

So then how am I supposed to feel now that this dude is dead? I started by thinking about the dude himself.

Listen: Bin Laden was not promoting a progressive social agenda. He wasn’t fighting for the proletariat or the little guy. He’s no Che Guevara (who maybe kinda arguably had violently-executed good intentions) and he’s no hero. I think anyone who dedicates their life to murdering innocent people and disrupting peace has a place in this world that’s situated about six feet underground. And whether the means to that end is an expensive military raid or a less-expensive missile or maybe an expensive raid followed by an expensive spectacle of a trial, it’s the ultimate justice a man like Osama Bin Laden deserves.

So that’s how I feel about him.

Here’s how I think we’re supposed to feel about his death: Justice was served. Whether you frame that feeling with a smile or an uneasy, suspicious slanty-face is your prerogative. But Osama Bin Laden’s death is not the sort of occasion on which you can build a convincing argument for either pacifism or warmongering. There are millions of people all over the world who deserve your undivided sympathy and compassion more than him, his followers or his family. Conversely, you can’t argue after ten years, billions of dollars and thousands of dead Afgani civilians that the ends justified the means.

A bad man got what was coming to him at a great cost to the world. America did what it said it was going to do ten plus years ago and affirmed that you can’t just murder 3,000 Americans and expect to get away with it. A man once thought to be invincibly illusive is now shark food. Anything else that might be said is just noise or a portent to some bigger issue that is not the death of Osama Bin Laden.

So, he’s dead. And I feel pretty good about that.

Oh, Tonight

I'm having a great week. Today I started reading William Gibson's Neuromancer and, well, things are looking up.

In a very coincidental way, I've been priming myself for this book all week. Monday I had lunch with Davers and we talked about art, culture, Internet, and the catharsis of expression. You know, Davers things. And yesterday, me and Higgy traded witticisms and insight over the process of creating writing.

So-- of course-- today I was sucked into the book that defined cyberspace and inspired a generation of nerds to build a world of their own creation. Tomorrow, I'll probably get visited my Morpheus.

I become entranced by something dark and familiar when I read about cyberpunk power brokering and bleak cityscapes that offer nothing but anonymity. It's the same feeling I get when my old mainstay, Turn on the Bright Lights, kicks through my car stereo at night. The feeling escapes words but it's definitively me. It's nighttime. It's gritty but not vulgar. Carefree but not cruel.

Say what you will about memory biases, but I swear: This feeling has welled up in me since I started listening to Interpol.

Oops. Gibson has totally borked my writing voice. I'm spending way too much time trying to thread together sentences that convey emotional whims with machine-like precision. Time to unjack from this terminal.

Note to self: Figure out how to update Blogger from Lynx.

Tap on Glass, Talk About Future

This Saturday, in front of friends and family spanning the strata of human experience, my old friend Phillip will be getting married to his college sweetheart, Alana, up in Spokane, Washington. I had the good fortune of spending a few cozy dinners with them while they were in Houston for various academic and job-related conferences. Of course I've known Phillip since I was in kindergarten, and I could tell that he was quite in love with her the first time I saw them together.

And against what I consider to be the insurmountable odds of my own construction, I will be standing up there, too, as one of Phillip's groomsmen. And when I say "insurmountable odds of my own construction," I'm not just trying to be wordy. I mean: I thought that between my rock-and-roll lifestyle, my complete emotional abandonment of Panama City Beach, and surrounding myself with people who are equally scared of commitment, I wouldn't be attending weddings in any serious capacity until I was 30.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't necessarily think it's weird for two people who are ready to make that sort of commitment to get married. I don't have anything against getting married. It's just a concept that is so completely removed from my own experiences and where I am in my own life that I have a hard time understanding the mindset that can lead to that sort of... I dunno, "leap."

And so it does beg the question: If I'm so unable to empathize with the married man's mind at 23, then where is my life taking me? Or, as they asked in all of my job interviews this summer: Where do you see yourself in five years?

I. Have. No. Idea. I've never been able to see five years down the road. Or two. Or even a few months. It's weird.

In fact, there's only been one future for me: The Distant Future. It was purchased for me by my mom and every person who ever told me "you'll make a great father one day" when I was depressed about my condition and needed a future to see. It's the American dream that Hunter S. Thompson was trying to warn me about. It's a two-story house filled with all the gadgets and accouterments and toys of a Family Man. And it's the only thing that has ever come to mind when people ask me about my future.

Seriously. When interviewers, counselors, whoever would ask me about my own thoughts on the future, I would conjure up what I believed to be my destiny and interpolate backwards. Where do I see myself in five years? Well, ten years away from being the father of a five year old living in Cypress, TX, or something. And rich, of course. The image of me pushing a lawnmower over a chemically green plot of suburbia while my kids try to kill each other with pool noodles is so incredibly (and admittedly) strange that, well, many of my friends are probably laughing their way through this very sentence.

I guess you could say there's a divorce between the future I've always envisioned and the reality I'm living right now.

In the past few months I've started a new job, marginally come to terms with the self-destruction of my most stable and enjoyable relationship to date, supported my family through some emotionally rough rigmarole, looked for a new place to live and, oh yeah, graduated. Any one of those events would be enough to get my gears spinning about my place in the world, but the wedding thing is really the icing on my introspective, hard-to-swallow Cake of the Future.

So now, in the wake of everything, I'm finally coming to terms with what may be the first hard truth about myself I've ever learned: I'm not going to be a family man. Or, at the very least, it's not going to come easy. I'm too damaged to commit. Too clingy to make hard decisions for the good of the family. Too invested in myself to pay dividends to anyone else. Too historically untrustworthy to be trusted anymore.

It's okay.

I know that I could become this person if I wanted. If I wanted to make that life a goal, I could drop every selfish habit of mine and work toward being an A-type Archetypal American Man. But it's certainly not going to just happen to me. More importantly, for the first time in my life, I'm coming to terms with the idea that it's okay-- and likely-- that I won't. For now I just need to work on my insecurities, my shortcomings, and try to maximize the different possible directions my life might take. Clarity will come.

But if the only vague future I've ever known is gone, then what am I working toward? A legacy? An empire? Fame? Importance? Being really clever? I don't care about those things like I used to.

For now, I guess I'm just working toward tomorrow.

Severely not blogging

It's a real travesty when I get into a good grove re: blogging all the time and then, quite suddenly, life throws the kitchen sink at me. Apparently this phenomena runs in the family. Bullet points, perhaps?

• Moved into new house. It's great, except for the rat(s?) and broken dishwasher and dryer. Suddenly the advantages of living in an apartment complex begin to shine through. I am, however, loving the extra space and backyard and place to grill. If anyone knows how you get a landlord to do the things he says he's going to do on-time, please let me know.
  
• Started taking classes at Rice again. Diffy. Homework every night eats up my free time in the worst way.
  
• Still working too much. Building a blog/social networking experience for my employer. Basically the best summer job anyone has ever had, ever. And I really like how my current is turning into a career segue for some very hands-on, technology-minded marketing job down the road. I would be a lot happier if it didn't chew up my summer days.
• 2x 2 miles/day jogging regime around the new neighborhood. There's quite a lot to see around the Richmond/Montrose area.

Something ranty will follow soon, I promise.

Only one week of high-stakes shopping until my birthday

I require sweet, sweet stress relief in the form of bullet-point blogging and nicknack posting.

• Last night's show was interesting but not unfun. No one expected The Faint to take stage until after Ladytron (since the show was billed as "The Faint with Ladytron") so you can imagine the chagrin on the muted faces of all those tween-punkers and tiny, tatted-up scene girls who were still galloping to the show when Todd Fink took the stage. April 20th isn't exactly the best day for a dance-punk band to expect thrashing and skanking from the disaffected stoner youth: Most of the crowd was deathly still until the end of The Faint's set. Despite all this, I had a rip-roaringly good time watching all this musical nonsense unfold. I heard "Destroy Everything You Touch" and "I Disappear" live: That's all I needed. And The Faint's animated backdrops were pretty entertaining to watch.
  
• I got free ice cream today. Okay, fine, not free-- the aroma of baking batter assaulted my smellbuds and forced me to splurge on a $1.50-after-discount Cherry Garcia waffle cone. I figure if you're going to enjoy America's finest ice cream flavor, you might as well commit to a sweet, crisp waffle cone over the cardboard-based sugar cones they were peddling. I work next door to Ben & Jerry's but hardly ever visit. It's part of my "at least do one thing to avoid early onset heart disease" life plan.
• Still no word on a place to live come May. I'm still sticking to the guidelines I set for myself earlier this year, but I'm now open to house designs besides modern-neo-deco-rary. If you're moving out and need a tenant in the Rice Village area come May, give me a shout.
• I'm giving Twitter a chance. There, I said it. When I become incredibly engrossed into the whole idea and give up real-blogging entirely, you'll know why.
  

Finally, the best thing I've seen from SNL in years.

photo c/o Cristina

Forget fishsticks, I've got a McBLT

Care of Jason Alexander.

This isn't the story I promised! It's pre-Seinfeld Jason Alexander singing and dancing! Lucky for you, I tore my knee up doing stupid things in boots Friday night so I've had plenty of time this weekend to craft my prose. It ended up being about twenty times longer than I had originally anticipated but, eh, these things happen. Now the question is whether to throw the entire thing up or post it as a series of Twitter updates.

Just kidding.

Why I love living contemporary

Okay, so let me get my bearings. This story needs orientation.

Front and center stage. To my left, some short, squat girl in a blue dress was grind-shaking her fists into my side, glancing up to me with some sort of drug-riddled excitement. To my right, some typical Bay Area darkwave kid a few years younger than me was popping his Commie-capped head back and forth to the rhythmic sirens and bass slaps. And in front of me, not twenty feet away, was the culmination of months of waiting. And it came in the form of a big, lighted cross.


There they are. Justice: The French band that took Christianity's symbol of redemption and salvation and twisted it into a beacon of their own design. They've crafted the fast-paced soundtrack of my life for the past year. I haven't been alone since.

This all happened at Treasure Island Music Fest 2008, a Bay Area indie wankfest that rivals Austin City Limits in terms of pretentious 20somethings oozing with cred. I flew out to San Francisco with my girlfriend, Cristina, to see Justice and the other top-billed Saturday acts that I've salivated over for a long time. TV on the Radio was there, performing tracks from their new album Dear Science. And those wacky Brits from Hot Chip were there, too, mixing things up for a spectacular live show.

The festival brought out your typical spectrum of San Francisco hipsters. Every group was represented, from the newest incarnation of goth shoegazers to the bright and flowing, handcrafted hippie culture. Instead of ridiculing them, though, I've lately been able to bottle and swallow my sardonic nature and instead just watch as they enjoy themselves in their own perticular way. Because anyone willing to endure the gauntlet of blinding wind and $7 glasses of Heinekin must have some common string with the rest of the concert-goers: We're all hypocrites, and we're all pretentious, and we all love music. And they all deserved to have fun.

Even if they're cannon fodder for really, really great jokes.

Pretentions aside, the festival crowd was aching by the time Justice took the stage. I was pressed up against the guard rail, grinding my teeth and trying my best to push back to keep my lungs open. Everyone was freezing despite the squeeze; coastal winds plus the semi-predictable nature of cool San Francisco nights equals zipped up black hoodies and frozen toes. I had to throw the concert T I'd picked up earlier over my white oxford. I looked incredibly out-of-place in a sea of pierced, gothed-out heads. A French reporter stuck a microphone in my face and started quizzing me on my thoughts about the band.

And when they did take the stage, hell broke out before a single beat let loose. Glow-sticks, water bottles, and concert schwag flew through the air onto the stage. A unified scream from behind me, then suddenly I felt like I'd been flattened against the guard rail. I yelled, too. My eyes bugged out and I saw them take to their throne.

Then,"Genesis."

I can't recount song-for-song how the entire night went, but they hit all my favorites. "DVNO," the Auto remix of "Stress," a souped-up mix of "Phantom," and a finisher of "One Minute Till Midnight," before an encore of "NY Excuse." Fucking incredible.

The night will be forever dog-eared in my mind. It was not only a spectacular musical experience, but it also possesses a certain personal duality. The concert was a culmination-- a culmination of months of waiting. I bought the tickets back in July and had been marking the days off my calendar like a little kid eager for his birthday to arrive. It was also a beginning of sorts. It was my first visit to the west coast and my first big trip with Cristina.

This past weekend was an awesome reminder that I still have a lot of world to see. And to write about.

Houston, I love you but you're bringing me down

Taking the good with the bad-- it's the story of the 20something college student. Taking the city with the traffic. Taking the school with the grades. Taking the money with the work. Taking the friends with the dramatics. Taking the girls with the heartbreak. Taking the hookups with the awkwardness. Taking the drinks with the hangover. Ad infinitum.

Eventually you grow up and start ignoring the bad things, one way or another. Maybe you excuse them away with religion. Maybe you become self-absorbed and narcissistic and surround yourself with people who can ignore their problems in the same way. Maybe you just shell up and become so engrossed in work that you stop taking in either the good or the bad. I've worked with people like that.

There's the hard part about moving from adolescence into adulthood-- you experience all the good things yet haven't stopped noticing the drawbacks. You've still convinced yourself that you're hardCORE enough to take both at once, not realizing that the human brain was never meant to be bombarded with as much information as we're exposed to today. So much bad news.

Adolescence was just all the good with none of the bad. Here's a car and some beer, try not to get any girls pregnant between now and college! I probably should have exploited that more than I did.

Adolescence, of course. Not the girls.

Goddammit, there I go again with one of those lofty diatribes. Third in a week. NEED MOAR LIFE UPDATES.

So let's see. Oh, I shaved my face last night. That's kinda epic. I haven't been clean-shaven since the middle of last summer, and I haven't actually seen my cheeks since the winter. I could probably extrapolate some sort of meaning from the shave but, eh, sometimes you just need a change of scenery. Sometimes a shave is just a shave. Last time I shaved my face I was immediately washed in a caustic sense of regret; this time I backed up from the mirror, smiled a big smile and thought to myself "Wow, I look happier."

I guess we'll see.

General self-improvement rolls onward. I spent all of Sunday outside, even going so far as to walk from my apartment to Rice Village, which was probably... what? Two mile walk? I'm bad with distances, but it feels like fifteen miles when you're in sandals. I kept thinking the entire way to the Village that if I were back in Panama City, it would actually be a shorter walk from my old house to the Pier Park shopping center. Both have a Buffalo Wild Wings!

Where was I? Self improvement, right. Being outside isn't something I get to do regularly during the week. I mean, jogging around Hermann Park at 6PM is one thing, but finding yourself midway through the Rice Stadium parking lot at 2PM on a blazing hot Saturday is an outdoors experience I hadn't felt in quite some time. The thing is-- and I hate to say this-- but I actually like being outside. It's the ongoing body image issues coupled with allergies that fight to keep me indoors and inactive. But if I can overcome them one day, I can overcome them any day.

Ah, there it is. The positive summer mindset. The do-anything attitude that I seem to lose over the course of the school year. Rather than suppress and twist it into a tool for my own disillusion like I did last summer, I'd like to take that positivity and run with it. Be the better person.

But inside...

Blogging? It's more likely than you think.

Bust out the French horns and divide up the delegates: I'm back with a little beginning-of-the-summer brain dump.

Let's start by looking at how I've been spending most of my time lately.

I got a job, you say? Sure did. The lavish and decedent world of the IT consulting intern is one with rules and, as any good Palahniuk fan knows, the first rule about the IT sector is that you don't talk about the IT sector. The second rule is to put a new jug on the water cooler when it's empty, the fourth rule is to grow a beard and never stare the Taliban straight in the eye, etc, etc. Suffice it to say that I've had a lot of fun at my job so far and I'm hoping to keep a death hold on it throughout the coming months.

Ah. here's nothing quite like the satisfying feeling of a job well done at the end of the day. For once I feel like I'm approaching some facet of my life with a totally professional, "no second chances" sort of mindset. And that's something that I've been thinking about lately-- there are no real second chances. Not for me. Not anymore.

I hate what college has done to me. I love the people I've met, I love the experiences I've shared with those I've held closest, and I love everything I've learned at Rice. But it's also made me a selfish person: A person who constantly debases himself for attention and affection instead of gaining it with a shred of credibility. It's turned me into a person who needs second chances. I turn in homework late, straddle a less-than-optimal GPA, play spin-the-wheel to make decisions about my heart, toss people to the wayside when I get bored or frustrated, and live recklessly. Not to mention that my life has been nothing but stagnant self-loathing since I misplaced my brain sophomore year.

I can't really blame it on my lifestyle. I have friends who are effortlessly able to juggle the party life while still being admired as laid-back, honest, trustworthy people. Even the ones who slipped into this loser territory a year or two ago made the most out of their second chance and turned into the adults they wanted to be. I'm still dragging my feet. I'm on chance seven and it's not shaping up better than the others.

Some would argue that all this regret is unhealthy. I disagree. I think we all fuel the engine of change with different timber: Some people use an inherent self-determination, some people use a structured set of goals, some use greed and lust, and yet others change simply by taking life by the horns and running with it at full speed. But I'm throwing regret into the furnace, because it only takes one vivid, regretful memory to push you away from what you were faster than anything can pull you toward what you want to be.

But I'm starting to see that there's no set of lips or laughs that's going to pull me out of it. I am going to become self-sufficient. Keep control. Be happy with the person you are, and people will be just as happy with you. And don't ask for second chances. Don't need second chances. Build trust. Move on and make some good first impressions.

When the rest of you look toward the center of whatever orbit you're flying about, you won't find me there. I am not the center.

I bet this isn't the post you were looking for. Please hold.

Your coffee is better than my coffee (REDUX)

On April 25th, a team of suited-up somebodies tore the plastic wrap off of Rice's newest structural question mark. The Brochstein Pavilion is a huge glass box full of chairs and plasma TV's (sort of like the Situation Room) nestled between the RMC-- Rice's tiny little collection of shops and eateries-- and Fondren Library. I suppose the idea behind this huge glass box was to provide students a place to work and eat at the same time; something more formal than the RMC but less formal than the Library. But like any good idea that Rice's administration has ever squatted out of its brain-thorax, the Pavilion has conjured a huge and stupid mess of problems and bitchy, clever blog posts all over the Internets.

Problems? Enter Dirk's Coffee. It's not really Dirk's Coffee, though. Dirk was an Avant-Garde douchebag who sold all of his coffee to THE MAN a couple of years ago in order to fund his blossoming crank lab. Actually Dirk's Coffee is a rebranding of Dietrich's Coffee, which itself is a brand owned by Starbucks Coffee. Regardless of who actually owns the coffee, there is a circular kiosk that sells coffee inside the Pavilion which is, essentially, owned and operated by Starbucks. This would perhaps be the coolest and most indie thing ever, if...

• Starbucks was still indie, which it hasn't been since last Tuesday.
• Starbucks was still cool, which... eh. Whatever. I listen to Arcade Fire.
  
• They actually sold the good products that you like about Starbucks, like the Green Tea Frappuccino. But they don't, because they're branded as Dietrich's/Dirk's.
• WE DIDN'T ALREADY HAVE A COFFEEHOUSE.

Ladies and gentlemen, that's right! Rice already operates a full-time, student-run coffeehouse in the RMC. It's aptly called Rice Coffeehouse because it is the coffeehouse at Rice. While this concept of Rice Coffeehouse selling coffee to Rice students sounds pretty straightforward, apparently someone in the Administration's chain of command figured that this complex concept just didn't add up. So now we have two coffeehouses: Rice Coffeehouse and Dirk's Coffee. They operate within about 50 yards of one other.

I'm not going to point any fingers... no, fuck that, I am going to point some fingers. I guess the first finger is a sweeping one that slices through the entire student body, including myself. Why the fuck didn't we make a bigger ruckus when this was first reported? I know my reaction was something along the lines of "That's so stupid that it'll never happen." But I guess it's been proven time and time again that trusting administrative offices to conform to the rules of logic is sort of like leaving your kids with a babysitter named Josef Fritzl.

The next finger is for President Leebron. Don't get me started on how he "didn't have anything to do with the decision." He's the fucking president of the university. His office knows (or should damn well know) about every business that operates on this campus. While he may not have been sitting in a black robe waving his pale hands over a crystal ball trying to figure out how to cut more student jobs from the campus, the fact that the plan made it from start to finish without his intervention speaks to his priorities: Satan > University > Alumni Donations > His Wife Ping > Students > His Children.

Campus media, I'm going to half-raise a finger at you. There should have been a massive Save Coffeehouse campaign spearheaded via the Thresher and the Rice Standard. It seems that rather than taking a proactive stance on the issue, both publications sat back and waited for the stories to make themselves. Rather than affecting the issue, they cashed in on it, so to speak.

So what else is wrong with bringing Dirk's Starbucks Coffee to the big glass box? Oh, oh! I know! Let me enumerate the ways...

• Dirk's brings nothing new to the table. No 24-hour food solution, no hot meals, no student jobs, and basically nothing that students wanted to fill that Pavilion.
• It's not a Waffle House.
• Rice Coffeehouse has no way whatsoever to compete with Dirk's. In less than a year's time, corporate backing from Seattle will prove Dirk to be the winner in the coming price war between the two establishments. And besides, do you think Leebron + Co. are going to piss money into Coffeehouse or Dirk's?
  
• Popular opinion suggest that it's not that good.
• Did I mention that closing CH kills dozens of student jobs in favor of three full-time Dirk's employees that don't even go to Rice?
• The other non-Rice operated establishments on campus-- 13th Street Bakery and the Rice Bookstore (O&O by Barnes and Noble)-- are rackets that specialize in high prices and shit-poor service. I guess the University Copy Center is alright but, fuck, I'm sure I could find a complaint if I had a need for it.

If you're at all interested in supporting the effort to push Dirk out and move CH (or some other student-run business) into the Pavilion, see the link below.

I Refuse to Buy Coffee from the Brochstein Pavilion (Facebook)

HAVE A COMPETITION!

I'm suffering from writer's dump.

See, I go through these magically prolific periods of writing-- usually during breaks from school, etc-- where I spit out like five moderate-length pieces of prose that make me moderately proud. Then I dry up like a librarian's poo-nanner and the words, opinions, and topics no longer come to me so easily. And finally I arrive here, back on the old CN, hammering away and trying to painfully rebuild whatever construct my mind requires to get back into the writin' mood.

I think I've actually written about this same topic recently. Oh well, fuck it, I'm trying to repeat history anyways and get back in the groove.

But now I have deadlines. While I'm wasting my time masturbating to Election '08 coverage and avoiding life outside my apartment, I told the Thresher opinions editor that I'd have another 750er out by next Tuesday. I don't want to write about the election (yet) unless it's overall commentary on, say, my own personal obsession. But that's self-involved and I'm trying to avoid that.

Did you know that was the best argument the the people back in Panama City could come up with regarding my Squall Line thing? That it was just a giant ego-boosting pill for some emo'd up, libertarian-hating college student? Gosh, you'd think these people would know me better than that.

Ha!

I should make my article topic into some sort of contest. Like, KYLE'S TOPIC-A-THON. And if I pick the topic you suggest, I'll write you into my article! YEAH! Just like that contest I entered back when I was five to get drawn into an episode of Bobby's World!

Here's a few examples of things I would write about.

• Election
• Things that affect me or you at Rice
• Things that should affect me or you at Rice but don't (sort of already did that one)
• How the Rice Standard had a year to prove its worth, and failed
• How the Rice Thresher needs to incorporate a few elements from the Standard to clinch that last 2% of the campus that seems unhappy
• Why I hate libertarians
• Why you should hate libertarians
• Why I hate Ron Paul. Nevermind, too dangerous.
• Why militant internet support for a candidate just makes them look crazy IRL
• ELECTION
• Who are these stupid looking people in my PHIL and RELI classes? They're too small to be athletes, but they sit at the back of the class and yell the stupidest shit. And they look at me with judgmental eyes and it makes me just want to Indian Chief them with a pillow while they sleep.

You know, things like that.

I feel like this contest is too self-involved, too. So I'll say this: I'll kindly take your suggestion and in return, you'll have my humble gratitude. I guess I can write you in, too.

Yellow Journalism

Yesterday I wrote up a little diatribe about how ridiculous the Rice Standard has become, then deleted it soon after; it's way past the scope of needing me to poke holes in its crisp magazine pages, I thought. Who needs me when there's a painfully blatant libertarian bias-- the publisher's note says something like the "Standard will not kowtow to any party line," followed by an advertisement for a Rice Libertarians luncheon and a neocon wankfest of a book on the pages following-- mixed with infighting and a general lack of direction.

Maybe they actually DO publish the Standard with the full understanding that...

• ...only seven people on campus agree with maybe half of what's contained in any given issue, and three of those are just because they're friends with the authors.
  
• ...four people in metro Housto actually have the vocabulary to make it three sentences into an article written by Arturo Munoz.
• ...quoting Dave Eggers makes you indietrash from 2002.
• ...blogs belong online, not in print.
• ...Ron Paul will get not a single electoral vote.
  

But even if they did understand all that stuff and made strides towards fixing those few glaring problems, my main quibble with the Standard would still stand, which is:

THE RICE STANDARD IS UNNECESSARY.

It's like having an alternative press rag in a town of 5,000 people, except that said publication only writes about issues on the national level, and does so in prose style. Oh, and they only write about topics spanning about a square inch of the acre-wide political spectrum.

But okay. So why did I decide to come back today and write another diatribe? I got this e-mail not twenty minutes ago...

Dear Rice Standard Readers and Contributors,

As some of you may have noticed, Alice was omitted from the masthead of our latest issue. After almost a year of dedicated service as Editor-in-Chief of the Rice Standard, Alice is no longer a member of the Rice Standard family and organization. Alice asked to be removed from the editorial staff on Friday night after copy-editing. Her departure was not amicable, and while an invitation remains open for her return to the magazine, she has made no attempt at reconciliation. However, despite Friday’s events, our staff remained committed to printing and distributing our fifth full-length issue. It hit the colleges’ newsstands yesterday.

This message is to reassure all of you that the staff of the Rice Standard remains committed to producing a high quality magazine; a magazine that displays the creative and intellectual talent of all of you, and every other member of the Rice community. We, as an organization, have responded to the void created by Alice’s withdrawal, and are ready push forward and try to improve our already exceptional publication.

Therefore, I am pleased to announce that Matt Schumann, one of our Executive Editors and a noted contributor, will be filling the position of Editor-in-Chief. Matt has been a strong supporter of the magazine since its inception and I have his full assurance that he will carry on our standard of editorial excellence.

On a more personal note, the loss of Alice came as a surprise to all of us. Without her our magazine would not be where it is today. Nevertheless, the strength of our organization does not reside in one person alone. It is the support of all of you that makes this magazine possible.

The future is always unexpected and is always full of unlimited possibilities. I know that together we can produce the best campus magazine that Rice University has ever seen.

Sincerely,

John Stallcup
Publisher, The Rice Standard

But I guess if I'm going to publish that letter, you should probably have Alice side of things, too. So here's the LiveJournal snippet where she discusses her departure. From said link...

there's many larger problems than what happened last night including but not limited to a lot of accusations and criticisms of my personality and style, and of course some male chauvinism. there were considerable efforts made over the last month to characterize me as the socially inept, psychotic despot. and they've succeeded, and i'm gone.

Despite the fact that Alice would like to see me flattened under a steamroller a la Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit...



... it's utterly ridiculous that she should be removed from the masthead of the pages she founded and paid for. It's not an act of fixing the magazine. It's an act of social revenge for some petty thing I'll probably never know about, like Alice serving the wrong kind of brown sauce with the foie gras at dinner last Saturday or whatever her friends get mad about. That's why these people aren't really journalists.

Unprofessional behavior.

Taking her out of the picture probably isn't going to fix much, either. Everyone's going to continue to write articles like they're being graded by Ralph Waldo Emerson. That gold-mongering, Ron Paul-loving libertarian lean isn't going away, either. They'll still be cracking the same whip over the same group of young, idealistic and morally devoid writers.

It's all so silly that, you know, I could only expect it to come from one publication. Thank God I have the Internet to absorb my pseudo-journalistic bitch rants.

Like a lungfull of needles, and I love it

I woke up with the crisp fangs of winter chewing on my nose for the first time since I moved into the Esplanade. And I loved it. I love the things that remind me of the season.

I fucking love winter.

See, I think it all goes back to growing up in Panama City Beach with some of the most gorgeous people you'll ever meet, both guys and gals. It was a very superficial world centered around tanning beds, going to the beach to tan, and hitting the gym before going to work on that tan. Winter was the great equalizer, drastically so back home; no longer did the pudgy and the pale feel the sting of inadequacy because God thought it would be funny to make them ugly and fat.

Winter undoes God's cruel joke and shoots the sun out of the sky. It forces us to bundle up. With enough layers of wool everyone looks like a giant, walking Hershey Kiss.

Winter is the American burqa.

Then our personalities come out to play. Our true selves are revealed, not pressured by the world of self-involved, masturbatory obsession on looks. Winter means having to hold a conversation. Winter means knowing what to do with yourself when the sun's not shining.

I am happier during winter.



Thanksgiving break was amazing, albeit short as always. I feel like I connected with my friends a lot better this time around since most of them are finally at real people college. It was a good prelude to the upcoming winter break. Winter break is going to be amazing.

Most of the Christmas gifts from my mom were bought on Black Friday. Check my two favorite.



Sexy.

I have another Thresher article hitting the stands Thursday night. But what I'm really waiting for is public reaction, because I'm ready to grab some friends and shakedown anyone who dares to argue with me.

Heroic in an age of modernity

You know what's great? When prolific writers write about their writers' block and call it writing. Like me, for example, pulling at hairs and strings and looking under rocks and nooks and crannies for anything that might actually get me worked up enough to be entertaining. I've been eager to author another one of those trademark columns for the Thresher since I finished penning the last one.

Then suddenly, I stopped being pissed off about anything remotely interesting. I doubt the entire campus and all those parents with $50/year subscriptions to the rag want to read my insight on why ELEC classes are giving me IBS or how sleeping fifteen hours on Saturday is a good substitute for exercise. And besides the lack of creative ideas, the old standby topics seem more cliche than ever. I feel like I overdid politics in high school to the point that I never want to cover a presidential election again.

Any asshole can write about how Barack Obama will ride down on a chariot and save America from itself, or how evil Bush is, or whatever the Typical College Opinion is this hour. And likewise, Ron Paul is too popular and too easy of a target to warrant my attention in the print forums. If I dashed the Internet phenomena that is Ron Paul (and by the way, that's all he is besides old and crazy) in the Thresher, I'd get to read about fifty letters to the editor in the next issue from unrealistic, skinny armchair libertarians ready to eat foie gras out of my skull.

That's right. Ron Paul is below me. Now go cry.

Campus popularity, recognition, and all that stuff that strokes my ego (and compensates for my penis size) doesn't come from attacking national issues. Or state issues. You win the hearts and minds of a campus by sticking to local issues, uniting your audience against a common foe that's trying to quash "us" little guys. Like hunger, as was my column last time. The problem is that, on the whole, there's not a lot to bitch about at Rice. At least nothing that has personally affected me lately.

I guess the root of said problem is that Rice doesn't do a lot of stuff "wrong." But it could be doing more "right," which is a columnist's nightmare, since you end up sounding like a blond toothpick with a laundry list of demands rather than a scruffy-headed, objective cynic when you write about problems.

Okay, I thought of some random shit to droll on about, so I can stop acting like an authority on the subject of writing. Here's a funny picture to aid in the transition.

Har har.

So college is all about obsessions. Don't argue, let's just agree that the basis-- the underlying truth-- is that college is about obsessions and sorting through them to define your personality. Some people obsess over movies, bongs, going to the gym, speed cubing, hacky sack, or whatever. People have obsessions, and college lets us explore them.

My latest obsession is the Sopranos. It's about as healthy as any obsession, really. It's changing my mode of thinking and the way I talk and the jokes I make on any given occasion. It's a fun show; it helps me get in touch with my inner sociopath without having to weight down all those dead bodies and throw them in storm drains. What really surprises me more than anything, though, is that no one prior to this year thought to say "Hey Kyle, you might really like this show." It seems like I actually am the last person to find out about it, but hey, that just means I can appreciate it without the added pressure of being up-to-date and such.

Sometimes I wish my obsessions would lead me down a clearer career path. I can't make an EE job out of grilling cheese steaks and watching Heroes. Those are things to do in my spare time, not a viable gold mine to support two kids and my suburban fantasy world where I derive sexual gratification from owning multiple iPhones.

I did catch myself dreaming up different types of UAV projects I could do for a senior design project while sitting in class today. That's the kind of thing that my future military employer would salivate over.

Now comes the hard part: Action.

Salut.

Ego-inflating week!

I've been basking in the stench of my own petard for the past ten days. It's pretty ridiculous, really. Starting with that Standard parody and followed by my campus-uniting Thresher article, I've been getting five times the daily recommended dosage of positive hippie vibes. Random-ish people around campus are stopping to shake my hand and congratulate me on a job well done. Not-so-random people are even taking the time to berate me for being a total jerk on the Internet. Couple that with a hearty serving of, oh, INTERPOL last Tuesday and you've got a Big Kid's Ego Meal, complete with fries, a soft drink, and a little toy that tells me that I'm special.

I mean, I'm still lethargic and sarcastic and all those other, darker things you love about me. I'm just smiling ear to ear on the inside. And now I'm synonymous with Waffle House. Who could honestly ask for more?

I could and I will. I need a new laptop.

Look, I know my laptop works fine. But two years is a long time; everyone knows that after two years everything dies, including children and relationships and weblogs. My laptop is starting to spew and sputter. Nothing that a good memory replacement and maybe a new hard drive couldn't fix but, honestly, that's really not the only problem I'm having with it. The problem is that when I bought my laptop two years ago, I wasn't thinking about practical considerations such as, oh, size. My mindset has shifted from "I bet I can watch movies on this thing with COLLEGE GIRLS with BOOBS and FRUITY LIPGLOSS," to "I really wish I could take this thing to class and play on FACEBOOK so I can waste time until SUBSTANCE ABUSE." So the really bright, fifteen-inch screen isn't really necessary anymore.

And such is the story of growing up-- worrying more about practical considerations than how Secretary will look from the foot of your single-sized bed. This is why everyone over forty is sexless and hateful.

So what I need is a little thirteen-inch sumbitch. I was thinking that the newer generation of Asus W7S laptops look pretty fucking stellar. Something that will fool my friends into thinking I bought a Macbook Pro until I open it up and it's running some backfucked version of Vista. Something in glossy black. Or glossy white. I'm sort of up in the air on that issue.

Or I could tough it out. BE A MAN.

I had my entire way of life summarized as being "morally reprehensible" the other day. I better run to my blog and complain about it! Quick, someone, tell me I'm special!

Oh, wait, I have a button for that. It's called "Publish Post."

And isn't it ironic, dontchathink?

I think it's funny how I always expect the big days of my life to offset all the shitty little ones. Yesterday, Dis-O, was no exception. It's not like I necessarily had high hopes about the day or anything in particular, I just wanted to walk away from it with a better taste in my mouth than when I arrived. After all, I've been working hard these past few weeks. I deserved something to go my way.

No such luck.

It all started well enough, anyways. But by the time 11pm rolled around, I had been stood up by so many of my friends on so many different occasions that I was pretty much ready to break into the registrar's office, pull my file, cash in my tuition, and start a new life up in northern California. I felt so taken for granted. Not included. On the backburner.

I have this sense that the general feel of last night is going to play heavily into my attitude for the rest of the semester. I'm no longer excited about anything. I feel like school is just another form of work, complete with a spectrum of people surrounding you that range from funny and tolerable to evil and two-faced. Except school requires me to use my brain in place of my biceps.

I needed Dis-O to be fun, and it was for the first few hours. The new freshman class at Rice is promising as ever. But after none of your friends call you for six or seven hours and everyone else is running around high on hormones and Hennessey and you just need one person to come rescue you from yourself and it doesn't happen... well, you get the point.

Ah, let's see... I need to talk about something more positive so people don't get all "OMG R U OK" on me. I followed through with my Sunday lunchtime tradition today by driving down to Chipotle and having a barbacoa burrito with everything on it. I read the Houston Press and felt like I could easily walk into their office with a printed copy of my blog and get a job on the spot.

I think it's pretty absurd that the mainstream newspaper in Houston-- the Chronicle-- is actually a liberal paper while the the Press seems to be falling into a more and more conservative bias. I mean, it's fucking Houston. You'd figure that the Chron would be run by cowboy meth addicts who carry around six-shooters and lynch black people after church on Sunday. And you'd figure that the alternative press in Houston would be run by liberals so far out on acid that they were fired from their jobs as at the Austin Chronicle.

Nevertheless, it's my tradition to sit there and read the sardonic wit of Richard Connelly as he talks about such Houston mainstays as ferret owners and corroded sewer pipes that pump oil refinery waste into your bidet. And they have This Modern World and The City, which is cool.

It's important to have traditions that you can adhere to when the rest of the world is busy hitting on guys and girls and tripping on mushrooms, metaphorically of course. There's something about a huge, disgusting burrito, a cold Dr. Pepper, and an alternative press rag that can inspire even me to get out of bed in the morning.

Big bites of summer, now devoured

Ah, let's see. I don't even know where to start.

I guess I'll start with what's fresh in my mind. I re-read Less Than Zero on the plane ride back from Orlando last night. It's not like it's my favorite book. I mean, it's very much non-plot driven and basically exists to shock the reader into understanding why contemporary society is bullshit, as is the case for most of Bret Easton Ellis's work. But like I've mentioned before, that book has an eerie connection to me. Every page seems to strike a chord with some facet of my life.

Like the idea that you can feel nothing for... weeks. That you can go days and days without giving a shit. Or that maybe you are feeling, it's just on a completely different level than anyone else can possibly understand. Ellis gets it. No one else gets it, but he pens it as I feel it. Or don't feel it, you know.

And then there's the whole hating your hometown thing. I've lived so many nights back in Panama City Beach just like Clay lives his nights back in LA. I've lived them fast, substance abound, staring out from the corner of a really nice house onto a hardwood floor teeming with people I swore I'd never speak to again. It's weird to think that there are people out there like me who sip their beer with complete contempt for everything, wanting nothing more than to be back at the college that welcomes them with open arms.

You might as well turn the clock from early 80's to 2007, rename Clay to Kyle, and move the story from LA to PCB. Seriously. So yeah, if you want a little insight into my internal dialog and what it's like for me on Christmas breaks, pick up a copy of Less Than Zero and give it a whirl.

I've been on two trips since we last spoke. I made a New England trip to see Allee and see all the sights and sounds of New York and Philly. Every time I go back up north, I'm reminded why I'm so lucky to be at Rice. The air is static and dry up north, with everyone you pass on-edge and waiting to pounce. Everyone is just dying to use that trademark New York/Philly vernacular to hit you with curse words you've never heard before. I'll take the down-home, blue-collar southern feel of Houston over that crap any day. But it was still a fun experience. Me and Allee hit up all the places in NYC worth hitting up, I got to ride a train, and I ate a big fat cheese steak at Gino's.

Then after a week or two of straight-up IT at Rice and finishing my summer math class, I traveled down to Orlando to see my brother and assist as best I could with his move-in. We hit up Magic Kingdom and just generally had a good time. I guess my biggest regret is not getting to spend any one-on-one time with him; we were a group of people the entire time. Hopefully he'll come visit me here in Houston now that I'm not living in the world's only multifunction nightclub slash cesspool slash warzone (you know, the WRC 90's). But I was actually pretty bummed when I left.

The next two weeks are guaranteed to be a little bit like hell on earth. I've got to start pulling overtime in order to amass the cash I need to make it through the year. And everyone's coming back to Houston, which means my able-bodied arms are going to be loaded down with bookcases and boxes and anything else that people need toted about.

I need to clean my apartment. I need to Swiffer and dust and I need to do dishes. I need to put things in their places. I need to start working out and I need to shave more often. I need to start taking things more seriously in my life and get in touch with reality.

Disappear here.

A prolific and housebroken college junior

You know what I like? Big, boldface, capitalized words that denote the theme of the next couple paragraphs. Monolithic motherfuckers that really let you know what you're reading about.

MUSIC

The word on the street is that Interpol has a new album coming out next month. Now, you'd figure that I'd be all over that shit like Pete Doherty at an all-you-can-eat heroin buffet. The truth is that I'm not exactly excited as much as I am anxious and a little worried. Let me walk you through it.

Interpol is like my cute, well dressed and New York-y baby. I was honestly into them before anyone else back during my freshman year of high school. Hell, I'm listening to them right now. I've grown through the most crucial years of my life jamming to their catalogue, including bootlegs of concerts and shitty-quality B-sides. Turn On The Bright Lights was like the soundtrack to my life sophomore year. I made it a downright ritual to open my Friday and Saturday evenings with "Untitled" before I actually got to any parties. It's such a noir soundtrack to those weekends that run late, with overtones of love lost and the darker, more brooding side of music that I love so much.

Then Antics came out my senior year. I was probably way too excited for that album because, though I listened to it just as much as TOTBL, it didn't quite connect as well to my life at the time. I was experiencing the heartaches of my first big breakup and what I really needed (or maybe not needed, but wanted) was a darker TOTBL. Some real sulk-in-the-corner shit. Instead I was greeted with something a lot more upbeat, with Paul forgoing the darkness of baritone vocals for something else. I liked it but... meh. I guess I was slightly disappointed-- not by the music but by the way the music should have connected to me. Though on the plus side, it did cheer me up a lot better than listening to "Dust in the Wind" on repeat.

And here comes their newest album. I hear the first single is already flying around the P2P world, but I'm just not motivated to give it a listen. I feel like I honestly do respect this band more than a casual download. I'm actually going to wait until the release date, buy the CD, and listen to it in its intirety like the indie fuck I am. I just hope that Interpol dishes me something that I can connect with this time around.

Speaking of sophomore and junior albums...

• I haven't really connected with Boxer as well as I did Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers and Alligator. I've also started masturbating to the thought of seeing the National at ACL this year.
  
• I can't get into A Weekend in the City, either, but I earhumped the dreadlocks off of Keke and Bloc Party back when Silent Alarm came out.
• Spoon has a new album coming out, too, but for some reason I genuinely love their entire catalog. I'm not too worried about their new business.
• Has it really been a year since Black Holes and Revelations came out? Matt Bellamy, you sure know how to make catchy music that never gets old.
• Modest Mouse's newest album? Like every other Modest Mouse album-- two or three catchy singles and a bunch of other songs to space out to while you're driving. Be careful, Isaac, or your side project might actually become better than your supposed claim to fame. Just ask Ben Gibbard what that's like. Death Who For What? You mean that guy from the Postal Service?

Now let's talk about

THE ESPLANADE

My AC now works. Didn't cost me anything to get it fixed, either. I called the maintenance hotline, placed a work order over the phone, and they did their magic while I was at Kroger. So now I have AC and more on-sale canned chili than my poor toilet could ever handle.

Here's a funny story. Really funny. So I went to Time Warner to pick up my cable modem nonsense exactly a week ago. In the package was the modem, cords, Laffy Taffy, and everything but the technician they TOLD me that I'd need over the phone that I'd need. So I ask the nice secretary at the desk if I need to go ahead and schedule an appointment. I've never had Time Warner service, and the leasing office told me that in order to get cable service I'd need a technician to flip a few switches in the Cable TV closet down the hall. And she's all like "No, don't worry about it. Those things are amazing! Plug them right into your cable TV outlet and they work!" Right. So I ask her if she's sure I don't need an appointment with a technician, and she assures me that the magic Internet leprechauns will find my modem and give me high-speed porn as soon as I plug the damn thing in. Okay.

So I get back to my place and plug the modem in and-- would you guess-- the "cable" light on the modem is blinking in such a way that all the blood vessels in my eye burst open. I blindly dial up Time Warner tech support to hear the guy on the end of the line, Kenny, tell me that I do need an appointment and that they actually did schedule me one when I went in to get the modem. Strange? Yeah. But they won't be available until Friday. That's fine, I think to myself. I can go a few more days without the Internet.

Friday rolls around. The word from Kenny is that my technician will be rolling in between eight in the morning and noon. I wake up and make myself decent enough to answer the door, watching early morning talk shows to kill the time. The View is really lacking without Rosie, I notice to myself. Then I realize that it's 11:45 and no one has called or anything. So I call up Time Warner tech support again. This time another guy answers and tells me that Kenny actually CANCELED my appointment when I called last time, with a note that said the appointment wasn't necessary. Strange? Yeah.

So this guy, suddenly realizing that there's been a big mistake made, decides to bump someone's Monday appointment so that I can see a technician ASAP. I wade through the weekend without Google Reader or gossip blogs or Facebook or any of the things that make life worth living. And yesterday, I finally got the Internet set up. But you know what the technician said before he left?

"You know, they could have done all of this over the phone."

Put the boots to him, medium style

I still don't have Internet in my apartment, hence the lack of updates or anything interesting on this page for the past week. It's really taking its toll on me, too. Instead of doing anything productive like, say, reading a book, I instead spend most of my time enjoying my Ikea futon and watching one of the four channels of broadcast television that I can pick up.

I've watched a lot of Montel this past week. I've also eaten a lot of Lean Cuisine and watched a lot of America's Funniest Home Videos. I really, really need my Internet connection back.

I guess I'll go try to finish Microserfs.

Fucking Time Warner Cable.